Preamble

The House met at half-past Two o'clock

PRAYERS

[MADAM SPEAKER in the Chair]

PRIVATE BUSINESS

CITY OF LONDON (WARD ELECTIONS) BILL (By ORDER)

Order for further consideration, as amended, read.

To be further considered on Wednesday 7 June.

RAILTRACK (WAVERLEY STATION) ORDER CONFIRMATION BILL

Read a Second time, and committed.

Oral Answers to Questions — WALES

The Secretary of State was asked—

Small Businesses

Dr. Julian Lewis: What recent representations he has received with regard to small businesses in Wales. [122174]

The Secretary of State for Wales (Mr. Paul Murphy): I receive a number of representations about issues relating to business in general and small businesses in particular. Recently I opened the business exhibition Wales in Cardiff and met many representatives of businesses. Last week I also met Welsh representatives of the British Retail Consortium. The Under-Secretary of State for Wales, my hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr. Hanson), has also recently met the Institute of Chartered Accountants.

Dr. Lewis: I thank the Secretary of State for that highly informative answer. Undoubtedly, a considerable proportion of the many representations that he has received will have highlighted the hostility of small businesses in Wales towards the Government's crazy policy of scrapping the pound and joining the single European currency. Does the level of opposition to that potentially disastrous policy among those representations stand at the national average of two thirds, or at the same level as for small businesses nationally of about 90 per cent. or more?

Mr. Murphy: In all the meetings to which I referred earlier, not one mention was made of the points to which the hon. Gentleman has just referred. I heard the shadow Chancellor on the radio this morning ranting against

Europe. The Government and the National Assembly for Wales are working to ensure that small businesses flourish. The Budget helped 29,000 small and medium-sized businesses in Wales. Those are the important issues that people are talking about, not what the hon. Gentleman just said.

Mr. Chris Ruane: What discussions has my right hon. Friend had with the First Secretary to promote links with the 300 Welsh celtic societies around the world to bolster small businesses in Wales, particularly our craftspeople and the tourism industry?

Mr. Murphy: As my hon. Friend knows, the First Secretary and I speak and meet almost daily. We have discussed how best we can help small businesses, including the points that my hon. Friend has raised today in the House and last week in the Welsh Grand Committee. The National Assembly for Wales discussed the matters to which he referred a few days ago.

Mr. Richard Livsey: Will the Secretary of State take note of the situation among rural small businesses? There are 10 representatives here today of Wales Young Farmers, who would be happy to meet him and other hon. Members attending Welsh Office questions at 3.30 to explain their problems. Their small businesses are in a great crisis. The problem affects more than just agriculture in the rural areas. Tourism accounts for 100,000 jobs in Wales. Is the Secretary of State in discussion with Treasury Ministers to alleviate some of the problems by varying the rate of VAT on tourism businesses in Wales to create more work and more profit in tourism?

Mr. Murphy: I understand the hon. Gentleman's points about the rural economy. It is important that agriculture in Wales should flourish, together with small businesses, small shops and small factories. In my discussions in the past fortnight I have been particularly interested in how new technology, such as shopping on the internet, can be used effectively in rural areas. I am also conscious that the Assembly has taken a special interest in how to encourage small businesses in rural areas through the rural development plan. We are all pleased to hear that young farmers from Wales are in London today.

Mr. Dafydd Wigley: The Secretary of State will be aware of the importance of training to business in Wales. Has he studied the words of the First Secretary in the National Assembly yesterday? He spoke about the importance of transferring from the Department for Education and Employment to the National Assembly the responsibility and resources for training under the social funds. Given that there are some differences of opinion and discussions are still going on, will the Secretary of State assure the House that he will take the side of the National Assembly, not the Department for Education and Employment?

Mr. Murphy: The right hon. Gentleman is right to raise that issue. I am of course aware of it. I always take the words of the First Secretary seriously. Last night, I heard his words on the telephone at 10.30. Among other things, we discussed the transfer of the social fund that


the right hon. Gentleman has raised. It is clearly important that we get the transfer right. I am fully involved in those on-going discussions.

Mr. Alan Williams: Does my right hon. Friend agree that the allegation that the Government are scrapping the pound and wrecking much of small businesses comes badly from a party which wrecked the pound and scrapped most of our heavy manufacturing business?

Mr. Murphy: My right hon. Friend puts it very well. He will recall that between 1979 and 1997, approximately 140,000 manufacturing jobs per year were lost as a result of the policies of the previous Government.

Mr. Nigel Evans: The Secretary of State will know that the amount of burdens, red tape and regulations on small businesses has grown dramatically over the past three years—by £10 billion nationally. With Europe, Westminster, county councils and now the Welsh Assembly all telling small businesses what to do, will he state that all those levels of government will start to listen a bit more to what small businesses are saying? Will he give an indication to small businesses that the demands for primary legislative powers to be given to the Welsh Assembly—which are now being made by his own party in the Assembly—will be resisted and that the people of Wales will have another referendum before any primary legislative powers are given to the Assembly?

Mr. Murphy: Those two points are not necessarily connected. We are all aware of the concerns of small businesses about regulation, and the Government and the Assembly are taking those concerns seriously. These points were made to me last week by the British Retail Consortium. The Government have a new ministerial committee on regulation that is looking carefully at the matter, and a Bill on regulatory reform is being published for scrutiny. The Government and the Assembly are working together to ensure that burdens on business in Wales can be tackled, and procedures in the Assembly now take into account consultation with business with regard to the Assembly's own legislation.

Energy Policy

Mr. Jon Owen Jones: What discussions he has had with industry in Wales about energy policy. [122177]

The Secretary of State for Wales (Mr. Paul Murphy): I regularly meet Welsh companies and industry representatives and have discussed Government energy policy. The recent announcement by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry on the future lifting of the stricter consents policy on gas-fired power stations and the pursuit of interim support to United Kingdom coal producers has been well received by Welsh industry.

Mr. Jones: My right hon. Friend will agree that no form of power generation is completely benign, but that renewable energy is the least likely to affect human health or the environment and is the only form of power generation that can be described as sustainable. In spite

of that, only 3 per cent. of the energy produced in this country is renewable, while the Government have a target of 10 per cent. by 2010. How will we reach that target? What contribution is Wales expected to make? Will Wales make a contribution that is proportional to its population or land mass, or one that is greater or lesser than the proportion that the rest of the UK would bear?

Mr. Murphy: My hon. Friend knows that the Assembly has responsibility in this matter as well as the Government. We have made protecting the environment a central feature of our economic policies. Wales has excellent opportunities for large-scale offshore wind farms, which could generate more than 100 MW. Such projects could bring jobs, and job retention, to rural areas, but we must be sensitive to the wishes of local people. The Assembly and the DTI will consult widely on that point, and those to which my hon. Friend referred.

Mr. Nigel Evans: The Secretary of State will know that the percentage of people in Wales employed in manufacturing industry is higher than in the UK generally. They have been hit over the past three years, with more than 6,000 manufacturing jobs lost—and that is before the threat of the climate change levy coming in and hitting manufacturing jobs in Wales. Will he give an assurance to the House that he will make representations to the Chancellor to protect manufacturing jobs in Wales? The Secretary of State has said that the Welsh Assembly and this House have responsibility for energy policy. Can I therefore give him another opportunity to state clearly that primary legislative powers will remain here?

Mr. Murphy: The hon. Gentleman will be aware that the people of Wales decided what they wanted in a referendum some years ago. The points made in the referendum campaign, the White Paper and the Government's proposals led to people voting for the situation that now exists in Cardiff.
On the climate change levy, the National Assembly has consulted the 20 major energy users in Wales, and the companies were generally supportive of our aims. Business was pleased that energy efficiencies made over recent years would count in the negotiated agreements. That has meant that several sectors are now close to signing an agreement that will give them an 80 per cent. discount. There are continuing discussions between the Assembly and businesses in Wales because of the very important change that is to take place.

New Trains (North Wales Economy)

Mrs. Betty Williams: What recent discussions he has had with the First Secretary on the economic impact on north Wales of the introduction of new trains. [122178]

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Wales (Mr. David Hanson): Transport issues are covered in the weekly meeting between my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales and the First Secretary. I also discuss transport in my quarterly meetings with the Assembly Secretary responsible for


transport issues. I am convinced that the provision of new trains, coupled with line speed improvements, will have a positive effect on the local economy.

Mrs. Williams: Is my hon. Friend aware that there are many rumours—not denied by First North Western Trains—that there are problems with platforms and tunnels along the north Wales coast that the new trains will use? Will he use his good offices with the First Secretary to seek to ensure that the new trains are introduced without delay, as they are due to start with the new summer timetable on 28 May? Does he agree that it is about time that we had some good news about railway services in north Wales, which have been appalling in the past?

Mr. Hanson: There are works that need to be undertaken to improve the line services in north Wales and ensure that the targets are met. Those works will be undertaken shortly and will ensure, for example, that the number of trains from Holyhead to Euston will double in 2002, from three a day to six, and potentially seven. There will be additional stops in several constituencies along the north Wales coast, including one at Flint in my constituency.

Mr. Elfyn Llwyd: I was very disappointed in the Government's response to the recent paper produced by the Welsh Affairs Committee, in effect rejecting all its proposals.
To return to the question put by the hon. Member for Conwy (Mrs. Williams), there is a big problem with Penmaenmawr tunnel: incredibly, the new train will not go through it. Will the Minister look into that and ensure that we have a decent train service in north Wales?

Mr. Hanson: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for bringing that tunnel to the attention of the House. Steps are being taken to improve the service. Railtrack, Virgin Trains and First North Western are all committed to improving the service. There will be additional trains, making additional stops. The work needs to be done, and the companies have set themselves a target of 2002–03. I am convinced that there will be improvements, thanks in no small part to the efforts of the Government and the Assembly in helping and supporting them.

Economy

Mr. Alun Michael: What discussions he has had with businesses in Wales about the prospects for the Welsh economy. [122180]

The Secretary of State for Wales (Mr. Paul Murphy): Both my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary and I have held many meetings with businesses and representatives of business in Wales, ranging from the chief executive of Corus and people at the opening of Dow Corning's new factory in Barry, to representatives of small and medium enterprises. We are both acutely aware of the issues faced by business and continue to relay their concerns to Cabinet colleagues and to the First Secretary as appropriate.

Mr. Michael: Clearly, the current weakness of the euro poses a problem for exporters in Wales, as elsewhere.

Will my right hon. Friend reflect on the need for investment in business in Wales? There are examples such as Dow Corning, to which he referred, and Matsui, which has taken its European manufacturing headquarters to Ammanford. Does he agree that the strength and stability of the economy leads to such long-term and important investments and that the policies of the Conservative party would pose a significant threat to their continuation?

Mr. Murphy: I could not agree more. Today, in Middleton in Carmarthenshire, another example of a job creation scheme is the first botanical garden to be opened in this country for 200 years. It will bring more than 200 jobs and boost our tourist industry, as well as being a major centre for plant research. I visited it with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport recently, and it was evident to both of us that this flagship project is another excellent example of our new Wales.

Mr. Robert Walter: I do not think that the House will have been impressed by the mutual self-congratulations of the Secretary of State and his predecessor in answering this question. As they will both know, under the stewardship of my right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague) and his predecessors, great advances were made in restructuring the Welsh economy. However, problems remain that this Government and the Assembly have not dealt with. The Welsh Development Agency, for example, in its recent analysis of the Welsh economy, identified a serious "enterprise deficit" in small and medium-sized businesses which, it said, were underperforming in
new business formation, innovation, research and development and investment.
What discussions has the Secretary of State had with the First Secretary to solve those weaknesses that are preventing small businesses in Wales from prospering in an ever more competitive world?

Mr. Murphy: If the hon. Gentleman went to Carmarthenshire and visited the botanical garden to which I referred, he would see that it is not a matter of self-congratulation but the result of many years of hard work by the people who undertook the task. On his general point, the latest inward investment figures for Wales show a total investment of £547 million for 1998–99, which is even higher than the figure of £334 million in the previous year.
If the hon. Gentleman talked to the more than 13,000 young people in Wales who have benefited from the new deal, he would find that that is not a matter of self-congratulation either. If he visited all those places in Wales that are now benefiting from this Government's strong economy, and learned about the thousands of jobs that are being created, in manufacturing and elsewhere, he would realise that it will be a long time before there are any Conservative MPs in Wales.

Mr. Ted Rowlands: I am sure that my right hon. Friend is aware of the importance to business and the Welsh economy of higher education standards. In that respect, is he aware that the National Assembly has not yet introduced a single pilot project to introduce education maintenance allowances to


support the poorest students in our communities to stay on at school and college? Will my right hon. Friend seek an explanation for that obvious and glaring omission?

Mr. Murphy: I shall, of course, give that assurance to my hon. Friend. He has spent many years in the House championing the needs of those who need better training. I shall raise the issue he has just mentioned when I next meet the First Secretary.

Waiting Lists

Mr. David Amess: What discussions he has had with the First Secretary about the number of patients waiting over six months for an out-patient appointment. [122181]

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Wales (Mr. David Hanson): My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and I regularly meet the First Secretary and the Assembly Health and Social Services Secretary to discuss health issues in Wales. The subject of waiting lists and waiting times has, of course, been included in our discussions.

Mr. Amess: Is the Minister aware that many of my constituents in Southend, West complain about the problems that their Welsh relatives encounter in obtaining out-patient appointments? Will he explain to the House how it is that out-patient appointments have trebled since that dreadful day in May 1997? Will he take this opportunity to apologise to the Welsh people for the incompetence of this Government in mismanaging the health service?

Mr. Hanson: I will happily tell the hon. Gentleman's relatives in Southend, West—and in Basildon, if he has any left there—about the situation in Wales. More than 1,000 more people are treated by the national health service in Wales than when his Government left office. If he had taken an interest—when he represented Basildon in the previous Parliament—in the performance of the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague), he would have known that Wales lost 1,200 beds, waiting lists went up and GP numbers went down in that time. This Government have committed £1.3 billion over the next four years to help the very health service that his party would destroy.

Mr. Win Griffiths: In the discussions that my hon. Friend has held with the Secretary of State for Health, were the problems arising from the legacy in Wales of the Leader of the Opposition mentioned? When the right hon. Gentleman was Secretary of State for Wales, 1,200 beds were cut, there were 300 fewer nurses and midwives, and in-patient waiting lists grew by 5,800. Will not the extra £51 million being made available to tackle waiting-list problems help us in Wales to overcome that legacy? Will my hon. Friend publish further information on activity rates, which show that the health service in Wales is on the mend and getting better?

Mr. Hanson: I shall certainly consider publishing information on activity rates in the national health service in Wales. The record of the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague) is there for all to see.

When he ran the health service in Wales, he did what he will do if he ever runs the health service in the United Kingdom. He reduced the number of beds and nurses and cut investment in the health service.
The £1.3 billion that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor has given to the national health service in Wales will lead to real improvements in that service this year, next year and in forthcoming years.

Agriculture

Mr. James Clappison: What recent discussions he has had with the Agriculture Secretary of the National Assembly about agriculture in Wales. [122182]

The Secretary of State for Wales (Mr. Paul Murphy): My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State and I meet our colleagues in the Assembly on a regular basis to discuss a wide range of issues, including the agriculture sector. My hon. Friend also holds regular quarterly liaison meetings with the Agriculture Secretary of the Assembly.

Mr. Clappison: Does the Secretary of State agree that Welsh agricultural produce enjoys a well-deserved reputation for being of excellent quality and wholesomeness? Many people in Wales want the country's produce to remain GM-free. Can the Secretary of State throw any light on how a GM maize test site that was supposed to be in England has turned out to be over the border in Wales? Can anything be done about that?

Mr. Murphy: The hon. Gentleman is right to identify the problem. The farm at which the trial was being carried out has a postal address in England, but the field to which the hon. Gentleman refers lies 100 yd on the other side of the Welsh border. Legally, neither the Government nor the Assembly can prevent the trials being held. When it was realised that there was a GM site in Wales, officials at the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions spoke to the company involved to try to get it to grow the crop in one of the fields on the English side of the border, or to remove that farm from the project altogether. However, as a result of various pressures, the number of fields available has shrunk. That meant that pressure to use this particular field grew, and the farmer involved pressed ahead with the tests.

Mr. Huw Edwards: Welsh farmers have shared in the £0.5 billion agrimonetary compensation that has been secured by the Government. Is not that £0.5 billion more such compensation than the previous Conservative Government ever drew down?

Mr. Murphy: I am delighted to agree with my hon. Friend, and to tell the House that the package is worth £28 million to Wales. That works out to about £100 per farm holding in Wales—the equivalent of every citizen contributing just over £9 to that package. That is good news for Wales.

Mr. Lembit Öpik: What can the Secretary of State do to help stop young farmers leaving the Welsh farming industry because of the lack of profitability in farming?

Mr. Murphy: The package to which I just referred is a good example of how we can help farmers in Wales. In addition, the Assembly is taking a special look at our rural economy to ensure that farmers, and small businesses too, are helped.

Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty

Mr. Martin Caton: What recent representations he has received about the protection of areas of outstanding natural beauty in Wales. [122183]

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Wales (Mr. David Hanson): I have received no recent representations about the protection of areas of outstanding natural beauty in Wales.

Mr. Caton: I thank my hon. Friend for that reply. I am sure that he knows that Gower was the first designated AONB in the whole country. The message that I get from people concerned with defending Gower's high-quality landscape and habitat is that current legislation is inadequate when it comes to protection and management. The Countryside and Rights of Way Bill currently before Parliament provides an opportunity to rectify that. Will my hon. Friend press his colleagues in Government to take the opportunity that the Bill presents?

Mr. Hanson: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for drawing to the House's attention the question of areas of outstanding natural beauty in Gower. Such areas are important, and Wales has many of them. I am pleased to be able to tell my hon. Friend that the Government have carefully considered issues that have been brought forward in the Committee considering the Countryside and Rights of Way Bill. The Government will consider tabling amendments to the Bill to achieve better conservation and management of areas of outstanding natural beauty. That will certainly help areas of outstanding natural beauty in Wales, such as those in Gower and in my constituency.

Miss Anne McIntosh: I have served on the Committee considering the Countryside and Rights of Way Bill with the hon. Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy (Mr. Llwyd), and I think that we have all learned something about areas of outstanding natural beauty in Wales.
I am disappointed by the Minister's reply. Can he not give the House an assurance that areas of outstanding natural beauty in Wales, as in other parts of the United Kingdom, will be strengthened under the Bill?

Mr. Hanson: As I said to my hon. Friend, and I will repeat it to the hon. Lady, the Government are giving careful consideration to the discussions that took place during the course of the Bill's proceedings. The Government are looking at the possibility of introducing amendments to help support and strengthen areas of outstanding natural beauty.

Oral Answers to Questions — PRIME MINISTER

The Prime Minister was asked—

Engagements

Mr. Ben Bradshaw: If he will list his official engagements for Wednesday 24 May.

The Deputy Prime Minister (Mr. John Prescott): I have been asked to reply. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has been working throughout the night on exhausting domestic matters, and there are no official engagements today. I am sure that the country and the House will wish to join me in expressing warm congratulations to my right hon. Friend, his wife and family on the birth of baby Leo, 61b 12oz—now that is a killer fact.

Mr. Bradshaw: I warn my right hon. Friend that thousands of pensioners in Exeter still expect the Government to do a great deal more for them. They welcome much of what has already been done and would be horrified at the prospect of the Tories taking it all away again. Will my right hon. Friend tell the House exactly how much more the Government have spent on pensioners compared with the previous Government, and why any pensioner should trust a party that condemned 3 million of them to live in poverty?

The Deputy Prime Minister: I very much agree with my hon. Friend. He can be assured that we will do well by the pensioners—make no mistake about it.
Let us get the facts right. We are spending £6.5 billion extra this Parliament over and above what the Tories planned to spend on pensioners. Now they say they will scrap the £150 tax free help with winter fuel bills and free television licences for the over-75s, which is worth £102 tax free. That much is clear from their proposals, but what they are offering is totally confused. On Sunday, the shadow Chancellor said that the Tories would raise pensions only in line with prices; today, there are different stories in different newspapers. This lunchtime, the shadow Chancellor said that the statement is a limited announcement and there will be no new money. I should say it is a limited announcement! If we listen to the Leader of the Opposition and we listen to the shadow Chancellor, it becomes clear that Hugh Grant and Liz Hurley are not the only ones going through a separation.

Sir George Young: We warmly welcome the Deputy Prime Minister to the Dispatch Box. We understand that the Prime Minister wants to spend time with the newest member of his family, and I am sure that the whole House will join me in sending him and all members of his family our warmest wishes.
Has the Deputy Prime Minister actually read the speech made by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition, which will be warmly welcomed by


pensioners up and down the country? Does he agree with the view of his right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field)? He welcomed our policy and said:
Pensioners will be pleased with the news that one of our major parties is saying that we should give money in the form of pensions and not in one-off payments.
Does the Deputy Prime Minister agree?

The Deputy Prime Minister: I am grateful for the right hon. Gentleman's warm remarks about my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister—the House will certainly accept them.
Although the right hon. Gentleman says that pensioners will welcome the Conservatives' proposals, it is clear that the shadow Chancellor does not. That is a start. As for the comments made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field), if he is happy with proposals that abolish the winter fuel allowance, free television licences and free eye tests—all considered to be gimmicks—I wholly disagree with him. That is the kind of unthinkable thought that I do not accept.

Sir George Young: The Deputy Prime Minister should know what Downing street said when his right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead was appointed:
Tony has enormous regard for his abilities.
All pensioners will be better-off under our proposals. If the Deputy Prime Minister cannot endorse the views of his right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead, does he agree with his hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Kilfoyle)? [Interruption.] He said:
Pensioners believe the winter fuel payments and concessionary TV licences are a diversionary measure… What pensioners want is an increase, week on week, in the basic pension. That is not just a matter of economics; it is a question too of pensioners dignity.
Does the Deputy Prime Minister agree?

The Deputy Prime Minister: The right hon. Gentleman may be promising to do things for pensioners, but it is fair for us to point to the record of the previous Government: 18 years—[Interruption.]

Madam Speaker: Order. The House must now come to order. I have heard enough from both sides. I want to hear the questions and answers.

The Deputy Prime Minister: I want to deal with some of the killer facts, Madam Speaker.
During 18 years of Tory Administration, 1.5 million pensioners were living in poverty. The Tories scrapped the earnings link with pensions, which is one of the major complaints. They scrapped free eye tests and check-ups. They also presided over the pensions mis-selling scandal, at a cost of £3 billion. The pensioners and the country will measure the record of performance of this Government against the Tories phoney promises built on phoney money.

Sir George Young: I am sure the Deputy Prime Minister did not mean to commit his party to restoring the link with earnings.
I am slightly surprised that the right hon. Gentleman does not agree either with his right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead or with his hon. Friend the

Member for Walton. When the Deputy Prime Minister appeared on "On the Record" with John Humphrys on 7 May, he expressed some sympathy with the policies that are being put forward today.
Instead of the paternalistic gimmicks of the Government, we will give all pensioners an increase in the basic pension of at least £5.50 a week. All pensioners will be better-off under our proposals. Is it not time that the Government learned the lesson of their local election defeat and started to give pensioners the dignity, choice, independence and respect that they deserve?

The Deputy Prime Minister: I do not know how the right hon. Gentleman can come to the Dispatch Box and still make those promises when they were rejected by the shadow Chancellor within two hours of their announcement.
On the question of the minimum income guarantee, we were the party that guaranteed that for pensioners. The right hon. Gentleman asked about the earnings link. We are providing more than £6.5 billion, which is more than would be given under the earnings guarantee, and we have already linked the minimum income guarantee to earnings. We have produced for the pensioners. It is absolutely clear that a minimum guaranteed income for 1.5 million pensioners was produced by Labour; free television licences for those aged over-75 were produced by Labour; free eye tests for the over-60s were produced by Labour; and a winter fuel allowance of £150 was produced by Labour. The Tories believe in conning pensioners; we believe in helping them.

Miss Geraldine Smith: Will my right hon. Friend join me in welcoming the fact that Lancashire county council has placed the completion of the M6 Heysham port link road as number one on its list of transport priorities? Will he join me in reaffirming the Government's commitment to allocating funding to strategically important roads such as the M6 link road to Heysham port, so that it can be completed at the earliest possible time?

The Deputy Prime Minister: That issue is very much part of the integrated transport planning that is now going on in my hon. Friend's area. I am very sympathetic towards it. However, the matter is subject to a planning inquiry at the moment and the House will understand that I cannot comment on it.

Mr. A. J. Beith: Will the right hon. Gentleman pass on the congratulations of the Liberal Democrats on the delightful arrival in the Blair family? It has the added benefit of bringing the right hon. Gentleman to the Dispatch Box on an occasion that is unlikely to be repeated this side of the general election. Will he take this opportunity to tell us why the Government support the giving of another £29 million to the company running the millennium dome, which has already received massive loans that it is unlikely to repay?

The Deputy Prime Minister: Nine months is a long time in politics and the right hon. Gentleman should not assume that I will not be back at the Dispatch Box—not that I am bidding for that pleasurable duty, I am bound to say. I am sure that the House will understand that.
An awful lot of the gripes about the dome are not properly targeted in the right direction. The facility has been attractive to many people and something like 6 million to 7 million people will visit it, which is almost as many as voted for the Tory party at the general election.
We produced a facility for a millennium celebration that will be seen to be successful. It was provided not for a one day party, but as a facility that all can enjoy for 12 months. On the financial requirements, it is true that the request for further money was granted, but it is hoped that that will be paid back over a period of time.

Mr. Beith: Does the right hon. Gentleman think that many pensioners will be impressed by the way in which money is being lavished on the project? Has he not now recognised that pensioners were insulted by the 75p pension increase, and that they would be equally insulted by anybody offering money with one hand and taking it away with the other, which is what the Conservatives' proposals amount to? Does he realise that unless pensioners are given significant real rises this side of a general election, the whole Government will be spending more time with their families?

The Deputy Prime Minister: If the right hon. Gentleman reads the Liberal Democrats' manifesto, he will know that all his party promised was pensions related to prices. That is precisely to what he referred. We have done that and more in giving pensioners the winter fuel allowance and the other measures to which I referred. We have given up to £6.5 billion more in pensions, so it is a bit much for him to berate us for simply giving what he calls the 78p on the pension—[HON. MEMBERS: "75p."] We gave a lot more; all he promised was 75p.

Mr. Martin Salter: Will my right hon. Friend join me in sending condolences to the family of Katie Kazmi, one of my constituents who was recently brutally murdered in a frenzied knife attack by a former Broadmoor psychiatric patient? Yesterday, it came to light that Mr. Williams, the assailant, was released into the community in 1995 and was supposed to be subject to regular supervision and random drug testing. Does my right hon. Friend agree that there should be an urgent inquiry to examine the failure of systems designed to protect the public from the violent behaviour of such individuals?

The Deputy Prime Minister: I am sure that the House would want me to express on its behalf our condolences to those affected by the serious matter raised by my hon. Friend. I believe that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary is to conduct an inquiry into the matter and is to have a meeting with my hon. Friend to discuss those facts.

Mr. Tim Boswell: What is the Deputy Prime Minister's view on individual learning accounts?

The Deputy Prime Minister: I must say that I was somewhat sceptical of individual learning accounts when they were announced. However, I have met several people in industry who have developed those accounts, which are welcomed by the workers because they get the kind of education and training that they want. Birds Eye, a

company in my area, wants more resources for the accounts as they do the job that the Tories failed to do, which is to train our work force.

Mr. David Chaytor: Will my right hon. Friend pass on warmest wishes from all my constituents to my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and his wife on the birth of their latest child? Will he tell them that our only regret is that, unlike his mother, Leo has not enjoyed the privilege of being born in Fairfield hospital in my constituency? Will he remind them of our long-standing invitation to the Prime Minister's wife to visit Fairfield hospital and open the new maternity unit that is being built as a result of the hospital's multi-million pound redevelopment, and for which we waited 18 years?

The Deputy Prime Minister: I shall certainly pass on the good wishes mentioned by my hon. Friend.
There are an awful lot of hospital openings, and nearly 30 new hospitals are on the stocks, which is the highest recorded level of new hospital building in this country.

Mr. Lembit Öpik: Given that the Government have effectively sponsored a genetically modified crop trial in Wales against the word of an Environment Minister, without consulting a Welsh Agriculture Minister and against the express wish of the Welsh Assembly, will the Deputy Prime Minister confirm that the Government chose a field in Flintshire only because they thought it was in England? If that is the case, which will he shift—the crops or the border?

The Deputy Prime Minister: As I have spent a great deal of time in Flintshire—and was born in Prestatyn—I certainly would not make that mistake. We acted as quickly as possible on the GM seed mix-up. We had to take proper advice and then my right hon. Friend the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food made a statement to the House. That should reassure the House and put the statement in its setting. The experts have said that these crops pose no risk to human health or the environment.

Ms Bridget Prentice: Could I share with my right hon. Friend some satisfaction that waiting lists in the health service have dropped? Much has been done, but there is still much to do. I remind my right hon. Friend that in my constituency during the last winter period we experienced considerable problems in the health service. I wonder whether he will make a small wager with me—if I predict that there will be another winter this year, what will he predict for the health service?

The Deputy Prime Minister: A continuing improvement, as there has been under Labour during its three years in office. We said that we would reduce waiting lists and we have done so by more than 100,000, and we are only three years into the life of this Government. We have increased the number of nurses, which was reduced under the previous Administration. The £150 million for critical care beds, which will provide more than 250 of them, will certainly help us with the difficult periods that are associated with winter. People can trust a Labour Government. We created the NHS and


we have put more resources into it than any other Government. It is our creation, we are proud of it and we will build on it.

Sir George Young: Can I take the Deputy Prime Minister back to the dome? Is he aware that 50 of his hon. Friends have signed an early-day motion expressing "deep concern and alarm" that the decision to give an extra £29 million to the millennium dome
will deprive the New Opportunities Fund of moneys that would otherwise go to education, health and the environment?
Does he share those concerns?

The Deputy Prime Minister: I am sure that the right hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine) did not sign the motion. The dome idea was established by the previous Administration, endorsed by this Administration and, as I understand it, by the Cabinet of the Government of whom the right hon. Gentleman was a member. We have to be clear that money from the Millennium Commission does not compete with that for hospitals and schools. It is not able to give resources to hospitals and schools. So far, none of the resources provided has denied funds to either hospitals or schools. That is the challenge for us; we think that we have achieved it in the dome.

Sir George Young: Does the right hon. Gentleman recall the Labour Minister who said that the dome would be
the first big test of competence
for the Labour Government? He should recognise that because it was him. He also said:
If we can't make this work, we're not much of a Government.
As he is in charge for the next two weeks, will he overrule the decision of the Culture, Media and Sport Secretary to give £29 million more public money to the dome?

The Deputy Prime Minister: No, I will not. On the right hon. Gentleman's point about my comments on whether the dome would be a success and that that should be a measure of the Government's competence, I happen to believe that it has been a success. It is the second most attractive facility to visitors. Almost 6 million people have visited the facility. That is a huge amount of people. More than 80 per cent. of those asked whether they had enjoyed the facility said that they had, and many of them intend to return to it. For a facility that celebrated the millennium, it has been successful in attracting visitors. I might say that it enjoys—apparently—the full support of the Leader of the Opposition who, on the first day of this year, made it clear that we should all get behind it and support it.

Sir George Young: If the dome has been such a success, why are so many people being sacked? The contents of the dome stand as a monument to the vanity and emptiness of new Labour. First, the Government blamed the chief executive, and sacked her. Then, they blamed the chairman, and sacked him. Is it not time that someone in this Government had the courage to stand up, take responsibility and resign?

The Deputy Prime Minister: We inherited a business plan that had been prepared by the previous Administration—we endorsed it. That plan estimated that

12 million people would visit the facility. The latest estimate is between 6 million and 7 million people, which shows that such a facility is highly successful in attracting people. In those circumstances, hon. Members on both sides of the House should recognise the large measure of agreement in setting up the project. Seven million people is nearly as many as the number who voted for the Tory party at the election, something which must be taken into account. If the right hon. Gentleman feels that the dome is a monument to what he calls new Labour, what sort of monument to the previous Administration is rail privatisation, which he introduced?

Mr. Jim Cousins: In line with the wishes of Labour's national policy forum, do the Government have proposals to increase the say of people in the English regions over their regional affairs? May I remind my right hon. Friend that more than 20 years ago, the then Labour Government rightly assessed the spending needs of people of Scotland and Wales, which has been protected ever since, rightly, by the Barnett formula? When will the Government do the same for the English regions, particularly the less-well-off ones such as the north-east?

The Deputy Prime Minister: I agree with a great deal of what my hon. Friend says because we have both been advocates of decentralisation in central and regional government. There is a point of difference between the two sides of the House on the matter, but I firmly believe in regional government. It is our manifesto position and we are presently looking at what we will put in our next manifesto. [Interruption.] Let us be clear: I will argue for regional government. That is how parties make their decisions. There are different views, there are democratic debates and we come to decisions. With the Labour party and a Labour Government, they are delivered. We have delivered in the House not only by having a Committee to deal with regional affairs, but by bringing in regional development agencies, one of which played its part in the west midlands recently by creating 35,000 jobs and increasing investment—but the Opposition say they will abolish those agencies. I disagree with them and we shall put it to the electorate. I have no doubt that we will have development agencies, further steps towards decentralisation and a proper allocation of resources between the areas.

Mrs. Ray Michie: Will the Deputy Prime Minister reconsider his decision to close the Oban coastguard station in the light of recent evidence to the Transport Sub-Committee that it will cost more to close down than to keep open? Will he look again at the overwhelming evidence and expert advice that he has received on the importance of the station to that area and also the dangerous maritime area that it covers, rather than listening to one man—Lord Donaldson? He should consider the fact that we are deeply disturbed that it will be closed.

The Deputy Prime Minister: The hon. Lady will be aware of many of the decisions that have been taken in the past couple of years. I inherited a proposal for the closure of a certain number of coastguard stations. I had an independent assessment made by Lord Donaldson and it was looked at by the Select Committee as well. Lord


Donaldson reached a compromise on the matter and proposed that the station and another one or two should be closed. That will not affect the level of safety. It was an independent assessment by a judge who has considerable experience in maritime matters, and I accepted his conclusion.

Mr. Eddie McGrady: Will the Deputy Prime Minister convey to the Prime Minister and Mrs. Blair the sincere congratulations of my party on the birth of their son? I hope that his labours in other directions in Northern Ireland bear equal fruit this weekend.
Is the Deputy Prime Minister aware that the purpose of the Good Friday agreement and the Patten commission was to create a police force in Northern Ireland that would be acceptable to both communities? Is he aware that the Police (Northern Ireland) Bill, which is now before the House, fails miserably to achieve that by commission and omission and that all those endeavours, which are the kernel of peace in Northern Ireland, could be frustrated by the terms of the Bill? Will he use his best endeavours to rescue that Bill so that it will receive support right across the community, because nationalists cannot support it as it stands?

The Deputy Prime Minister: I really understand what my hon. Friend is saying on that matter. There is a great deal of concern in the House about those issues, and that was reflected in the debate on the police. There will be a Second Reading as soon as we come back after the recess and many of those matters will be discussed and thrashed out in the debate, as they were a few days ago. His point

about everyone having to come to an agreement to get understanding is absolutely important. I cannot prejudge the outcome of the Ulster Unionist council meeting on Saturday, but we call on its members to consider whether they can obtain a better offer than this. They have to give serious consideration to that. Everyone on both sides of the House would like to see agreement and continuing efforts towards peace in Northern Ireland.

Mr. Robert Syms: Given the debacle of the genetically modified oilseed crops, can the Deputy Prime Minister assure the House that the Government know of no other cases of similar contamination of other crop varieties—for example, maize?

The Deputy Prime Minister: I am sorry; I must apologise to the House. I missed the hon. Gentleman's question because there was some talking.

Madam Speaker: Will the hon. Gentleman repeat the question? If Members would be quiet, we would hear the questions. Raise your voice, Mr. Syms, too.

Mr. Syms: Given the debacle involving genetically modified oilseed crops, can the Deputy Prime Minister assure the House that the Government know of no cases of similar contamination of other crop varieties—for example, maize?

The Deputy Prime Minister: We have no evidence and no information on that, but the hon. Gentleman can be assured that if we receive information we shall certainly tell the House about it.

Strategic Export Controls (Breach of Embargo)

Mr. Harry Cohen: I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to prohibit the involvement of British subjects and companies and other persons under United Kingdom jurisdiction in the supply of armaments and associated items to countries to which arms embargoes apply.
The Bill's aim is simply to prevent British subjects anywhere in the world from supplying weapons and related equipment whose export would be prohibited if it took place directly from the United Kingdom.
I originally thought of tabling a ten-minute Bill on corporate responsibility in cases in which companies' actions had caused death, but because other Members—including my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Mr. Mackinlay), who is sitting next to me—have raised that in Bills recently, and because the Government are taking notice, I decided to raise the subject of arms trading, which could be described as corporate killing at its most extreme.
The existing British law on arms exports contains three major loopholes, relating to brokering, licensing and direct sales from British people based overseas. Brokering is a difficult concept, but is basically the transfer of arms from one country to another that is organised from a third. For example, the company Sandline organised from Britain the transfer of weapons from Bulgaria to Sierra Leone, and before that Mil Tec organised from the Isle of Man the transfer of arms from Albania and Israel to Rwanda. As the arms never enter the United Kingdom, they are not under the control of our law. The law relating to brokering needs to be clarified and tightened, and, when such brokering is used to get around embargoes, it needs to be criminalised.
Licensing is the arrangement for production in another country, outside UK jurisdiction. Arms can then be used in that country, or exported, without any reference to British law. When it breaches embargoes, that too needs to be stopped. My Bill would prohibit brokering and licensing by both individuals and companies based in the United Kingdom and dependent territories. Direct sales take place when British citizens are involved in the supply of arms while operating outside the United Kingdom.
The proposal for such a widening of UK jurisdiction is not new. In the main, British law covers breaches of embargoes mandated by United Nations Security Council resolutions. My Bill would expand that cover to other embargoes, such as those called for by the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe and the European Union, as well as those declared on a unilateral basis by Her Majesty's Government—for example, the current embargo on arms and arms-related sales to Zimbabwe.
The Government's White Paper on strategic export controls, published in July 1998, said that
it would be right in principle to control the involvement of persons in the UK or UK persons abroad in trafficking and brokering…to countries subject to other types of embargo.
Unfortunately, we have seen no progress on that.
In February 1999, in its report on the Sandline affair and Sierra Leone, the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs recommended that legislation to control brokering be introduced no later than the next parliamentary Session—that is, the current Session. Obviously, that has not happened. There has been plenty of discussion, but more than four years after the publication of the Scott report, we still have no legislation.
The strategic export controls sub-committee has said:
We support a more stringent policy on brokering and trafficking, which could act as a spur to international action. We look to the 1999 Annual Report to make some specific reference to the Government's view of the way forward on this issue.
I accept that legislation to cover all aspects of brokering and licensing will be complicated and that that has contributed to the delay in introducing legislation. However, the simple proposals in my Bill are a minimum requirement to control brokering and licensing of arms, and could be implemented quickly and easily. That would not remove the requirement for more detailed legislation later, but it would close some of the worst loopholes that facilitate arms trafficking.
There is another reason for looking at that particular part of the arms trade. It resonates with one of the key themes of the Government: rights and responsibilities. One of the reasons why so many people are wandering the globe seeking asylum is that the arms trade makes some parts of the world extremely dangerous. In countries where dispute turns to violence, that violence is made significantly worse by the influx of arms from outside: Sierra Leone is an example. On CNN last night, the Reverend Jesse Jackson, the United States envoy, put the troubles down to diamond smuggling, the drug trade and gun running. The same was the case in Rwanda with Mil Tec, which, as I have said, was based in the Isle of Man.
British subjects overseas rightly expect the protection that a British passport can offer. We can be rightly proud that British Governments of all political persuasions have come to the assistance of British passport holders overseas. However, carrying a British passport must carry obligations as well as benefits. It is wrong for a British passport holder to be involved in activities that displace and weaken the vulnerable—so that they are forced to become refugees and seek asylum in another country—without being subject to British law.
Some may say that the British Government should not have control of British citizens overseas, but precedents have already been set. Examples include legislation on sex tourism and the controls on land mines. Yesterday, The Guardian reported that, following our ratification of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development anti-bribery convention, the Government are considering extra-territorial laws to make it an offence for British citizens to offer bribes for business contracts anywhere in the world, so there is that precedent for extra-territorial law. It needs to apply to arms trafficking.
My Bill is just one small step in pushing forward the debate on how strategic export controls are to be implemented in this country following the Scott report and the activities of the Joint Select Committee on Strategic Export Controls, of which I am a member, but my Bill has a wider purpose. One of the major political issues of today is refugees, yet almost all the public debate is focused on what to do with refugees when they have fled from their home countries. Very little attention has been paid to why people become refugees and what could be done to reduce the numbers at source.
Armed conflicts are fuelled by arms. It remains a scandal that there are such lax controls. For example, several hundred arms brokers in London are not required to register activity and are subject to no regulation whatever. We need to make them subject to United Kingdom laws—especially in the case of agreed embargoes—whether they are operating in this country or abroad. That is what the Bill seeks to do. If enacted, it would contribute to making the world a safer place.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. Harry Cohen, Mr. Harry Barnes, Ann Clwyd, Mr. Jeremy Corbyn, Mr. Jim Cousins, Mr. Jimmy Hood, Ms Jenny Jones, Laura Moffatt, Mr. Brian Sedgemore, Mr. Alan Simpson and Dr. Phyllis Starkey.

STRATEGIC EXPORT CONTROLS (BREACH OF EMBARGO)

Mr. Harry Cohen accordingly presented a Bill to prohibit the involvement of British subjects and companies and other persons under United Kingdom jurisdiction in the supply of armaments and associated items to countries to which arms embargoes apply: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time on Friday 9 June, and to be printed [Bill 135].

Opposition Day

[11TH ALLOTTED DAY]

Crime

Madam Speaker: I have selected the amendment in the name of the Prime Minister.

Miss Ann Widdecombe: I beg to move,
That this House regrets that police strength in England and Wales has fallen by more than 2,300 since the Government came to power, that crime is now rising, and that the Government has released early from prison thousands of drug dealers, sex offenders, burglars and violent criminals; notes the criticism of the Government's crime reduction targets, and further that police officers are unable to devote much of their time to fighting crime because of unnecessary bureaucracy; notes with surprise that none of the Government's local child curfews have been issued and that anti-social behaviour orders have been issued at the rate of less than one per week since they became available; further notes that, in contrast to the Government's failure to tackle crime, the Opposition propose to reverse the decline in police numbers that has occurred since the Government came to power, to provide effective and appropriate punishment and rehabilitation for offenders and to put the interests of victims at the heart of the criminal justice system; calls on the Home Secretary to reconsider his proposed changes to Immigration Rule 320(18) that would remove the prohibition on foreign sex offenders and drug traffickers entering the United Kingdom; and calls on the Government to work to restore public confidence in the criminal justice system and the police, to restore police morale, and to implement effective policies to tackle rising crime.
In short, the Government have betrayed the electorate. They have betrayed the general public and they have broken one of the major promises made by the Labour party, which said that it would be
tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime".
Championed by the Prime Minister, that slogan was the rallying cry of new Labour long before the general election. However, in government, the Home Secretary has been all talk and no delivery. Far from being tough on crime, he has been tough on crime fighters. After six years of falling crime rates, beginning in 1993, crime is now rising once again.
The first sustained fall in crime since the second world war has been turned round, and we are now faced with a rising crime rate. The latest figures are even more alarming than those for last year. In London, the crime rate increased by 12.6 per cent. in the year ending 31 March. The Metropolitan police have said that that gives "cause for concern". Nevertheless, last week the Prime Minister told the House that he did not believe that policing was in crisis. Yet on that very day the Home Secretary stood up at the Police Federation conference, and there, quite unmistakeably set out in 2 ft high letters behind him, was the conference's theme, "Policing in Crisis".
The chairman of the Police Federation told the Home Secretary that there was
a crisis of no confidence, a crisis of no cash and a crisis of no colleagues
in the police service. This week, in THE HOUSE magazine, he wrote:
The new century finds the service at its lowest ebb in recent memory.


If that is the opinion of the police, let not the Home Secretary try to take refuge in blaming the previous Government.
A recent survey of more than 6,000 serving police officers found that three quarters believed that morale was low and that 71 per cent. would have taken another job with the same rate of pay if it had been offered to them.
Hon. Members and the public can draw their own conclusions as to who is telling the truth about what is happening in the police service, or perhaps I should say, what is happening to the police service. Police numbers have fallen by more than 2,300 since Labour came to power. That includes a significant fall in the number of front-line constables. The thin blue line is getting ever thinner.
The Home Secretary always likes to bleat that numbers fell under the Tories between 1993 and 1997. However, he knows as well as I do that the number of constables increased year on year over that period, and that the reductions in total numbers were due to cuts in middle management. Under the Labour Government, both the overall number of police officers and the number of constables have fallen. That is despite the Home Secretary's words to the Police Federation within days of coming to office, when he said:
The police constable is central to the success of our police service. In difficult, demanding and often dangerous circumstances, the constable is the physical presence of the law on our streets.
Yet under his Administration and under his stewardship of the Home Office, the number of constables—
the physical presence of the law on our streets—
has steadily fallen.
We all know about the way the Home Secretary and his spin doctors fiddled Labour's conference pledge on police numbers. By contrast, we are pledged to restore the number of police officers to the levels inherited by the Government. We say that with no smoke and no mirrors. Is the right hon. Gentleman able to confirm that the figures on police numbers given in written answers hide the real picture? Is it not the case that the figures that he and his Ministers regularly provide relate not to actual strength but to budgeted strength, and that the amount of manpower available on our streets is substantially less than the Government have said? Will he tell the House how many police officers there actually are in England and Wales? Is it the estimated 124,800 provided in parliamentary answers, or is the figure substantially lower?
Fewer police officers are having to cope with more and more bureaucracy, such as the new crime reduction targets. According to the president of the Association of Chief Police Officers, Sir John Evans, on the day those targets were announced they were already in some difficulties. The Police Federation has said that the targets will mean shifting resources away from serious crimes, including crimes of violence, and from street patrolling.
We have seen that happen before, in the Government's approach to the health service. By setting politically inspired targets, they have distorted priorities. According to the police, there seems to be a real danger that the Home Secretary is now doing the same in the war against crime.
As if that were not enough, in the White Paper on licensing the Home Secretary wants to make police officers—not local councils, local magistrates or local bureaucrats, but police officers—responsible for approving requests to sell alcohol on a temporary basis. With just five days' notice, the local police officer would have to carry out the necessary checks, receive objections, issue a formal letter granting or refusing permission and, if there were objections, defend his decision before the licensing committee of the local authority.
I do not know about the Home Secretary, but surely that proposal would be regarded by most sensible people as an unnecessary bureaucratic burden. It does not contribute to fighting or preventing crime, and it would be perfectly possible, under the Government's plans, for the local authority to shoulder much of that burden. The police would have to be consulted, but why do they have to do all the bureaucratic donkey work? Joined up Government? We do not even have joined up thinking in the Home Office.
We need a comprehensive review of all police functions to ensure that they are allowed to get on with the job of fighting crime. The right hon. Gentleman told the 1997 Police Federation conference that
the police have my wholehearted support and the wholehearted support of this new Government. We will do all that we can to ensure our police service is strong and effective. We will also support you by providing the protection and the resources you require.
Surely the Home Secretary has not forgotten that speech of three years ago. What is the reality today? Yesterday, we found out that, far from giving front-line police officers the full support and protection that he pledged, under his early release scheme the Home Secretary has let more than 100 criminals convicted of assaulting police officers out of prison before the minimum point of their sentence. People who, having assaulted the police and been given, on average, four and a half months in jail, have served just six weeks. What message does that send out to the men and women of our police service?
It is another kick in the teeth for the police when the criminals that they have caught and seen locked up for a range of other serious crimes are let out of jail early. [Interruption.] I hope that Labour Members are listening, because this is where the Home Secretary's policy has got them. Between January last year and the end of last month, the Home Secretary's early release scheme let out more than 20,000 convicted criminals before the minimum point of their sentences.
What sort of convicted criminals? Trivial ones? Nope. There were 53 convicted of manslaughter; six convicted of attempted murder; 34 of making threats to kill; 2,562 of wounding, actual bodily harm or grievous bodily harm; 128 of assaulting police, obstructing a constable or resisting arrest; 23 of cruelty to children; two of causing an explosion; 20 sex offenders with convictions for buggery, indecent assault or unlawful sex with an under-aged girl; 1,887 convicted burglars; 811 robbers; 125 arsonists; 60 blackmailers; 30 kidnappers and 772 convicted of affray and violent disorder. I am not surprised that the Government are getting embarrassed.
Despite the Government's promise of a war on drugs, 2,767 people convicted of drug dealing and trafficking have been released. This week, the Minister of State admitted that he had not even given us the true picture in


his previous answers. His excuse was that there had been under-reporting of the further offences committed by the criminals when they should have been in prison. Now we know that almost 400, rather than fewer than 200, which was the Home Secretary's previous claim, have committed more than 700 further crimes when they would, but for the Home Secretary's kindly early release scheme, have still been in prison. Those crimes include two rapes, nine assaults on police officers, 18 other serious assaults, 21 burglaries, 14 offences of affray and violent disorder and 13 offences of drug dealing. Labour Members should take note of that because they are the Home Secretary's own statistics given in his own written answers, and they are beyond dispute.

Mr. Nigel Beard: Will the right hon. Lady confirm that she has the agreement of the shadow Chancellor to spend the extra £1.5 billion that would be involved if such an early release programme were abandoned?

Miss Widdecombe: While I do not recognise the hon. Gentleman's figure, I do indeed have the agreement of my right hon. Friends the Leader of the Opposition and the shadow Chancellor and of the entire shadow Cabinet that we will scrap completely the early release on tagging scheme. Under Labour, the message is clear that, "If you get six months, you will get out in six weeks."

Mr. Dale Campbell-Savours: The right hon. Lady has just given an undertaking to the House. Can she put a price on it? How much?

Miss Widdecombe: We have estimated that the total cost of all our provisions involving imprisonment is £260 million.

Mr. Bob Blizzard: The right hon. Lady has just told the House that she will scrap the early release scheme. Does that mean that she would require Tony Martin to serve his full sentence and not allow him to be released early?

Madam Speaker: Order. I think that the right hon. Lady is aware that that case is under appeal and is sub judice.

Miss Widdecombe: I was, indeed, aware that the case was sub judice. I shall take the underlying question as opposed to the specific case. We have said that we will scrap early release on tagging. That is the scheme that was introduced by the Home Secretary, by which prisoners do not even serve up to the minimum point of their sentence at which they would get automatic release, but are released before that. We have also said that we would restore the proposals that we introduced and which the Government threw out when they came to power—for honesty in sentencing, so that the sentence handed down would be the sentence served and everything would be transparent.

The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Jack Straw): What the right hon. Lady has said is that a Conservative Government would abolish early release on licence, and make criminals serve the full term

ordered by the judge in open court. Is she saying that someone currently sentenced to four years would have to serve that four-year sentence?

Miss Widdecombe: The right hon. Gentleman heard me—

Mr. Straw: Answer.

Miss Widdecombe: I am going to answer, if the right hon. Gentleman will have some patience. I have just got back to the Dispatch Box and he yells "Answer." A bit of courtesy would be appreciated. He heard me say clearly just now that I would reintroduce the proposals that we almost put on the statute book for honesty in sentencing—proposals which Labour abandoned. He will know that we proposed that judges should take account of what people would actually serve and what they expected and wanted people to serve, and that that would be the sentence handed down. It would be transparent and everyone would know where they were.

Mr. Straw: rose—

Miss Widdecombe: As the right hon. Gentleman spent a lot of time opposing those very sensible measures, he knows precisely how the calculations were done. He knows exactly what was involved, and he knows that we have said that that is what we will reintroduce.

Mr. Straw: rose—

Miss Widdecombe: I know that the right hon. Gentleman is keen to prevent me from moving on to his immigration rules, but I shall give him one more chance.

Mr. Straw: I shall come on to deal with why we opposed those rules, which would have had the effect—among many other adverse consequences—of prisoners serving less time than they do under the current regime.

Miss Widdecombe: No.

Mr. Straw: Oh yes. The right hon. Lady may also have forgotten that so chaotic were those provisions that they had to be withdrawn and subsequently reintroduced, and that they were still chaotic. Given what she has said, will she confirm that, in practice, her proposals—for all the badging that she gives them—would make not a scrap of difference? Currently, in principle, someone who is sentenced to four years serves two, whereas, under her proposals, if the judge intended that person to serve a minimum sentence of two years, that person would be given a minimum sentence of two years.

Miss Widdecombe: The right hon. Gentleman is releasing those people even before two years—that is the point of the tagging scheme. He should not be allowed to dodge that fact. We have said that we expect the judge to give the sentence that he expects the prisoner to serve.
I shall now deal with the immigration rules.

Mr. Simon Hughes: Will the right hon. Lady give way?

Miss Widdecombe: In a moment.

Mr. Hughes: On this point; before she moves on.

Miss Widdecombe: All right; I am very generous.

Mr. Hughes: Can the right hon. Lady confirm that the implication of the policy that she has just outlined is that there would be longer sentences and more people in prison? If so, how does she explain the fact that, when she and other Conservative Members were in government, we had rising prison numbers, falling conviction rates—[HON. MEMBERS: "Falling crime."] No, not falling crime—[Interruption.] No. How does she explain those facts, and the fact that, in 1992, after 13 years of the Tories, we had the highest crime rates in the history of this country? How does she explain that?

Miss Widdecombe: The very fact that the hon. Gentleman finds it necessary to rewrite history proves just how completely he misunderstands it. Yes, we did have rising prison numbers and we had record prison numbers, but during that time we also had the first sustained fall in crime. The lesson was that, if we take repeat offenders off the street, we have an impact on crime and protect the public. If the hon. Gentlemen were interested in protecting the public, he would welcome putting people in prison who would otherwise be menaces on the streets.
I shall now deal with the immigration rules, whether Labour Members want me to or not. The Home Secretary proposes to change the immigration rules for convicted criminals. Previously, the British public were—or so they thought—protected by those rules against all foreign criminals convicted of offences that would carry a maximum sentence of 12 months or more in the United Kingdom. Under the Home Secretary's proposals, that rule will apply only to the most serious offences—those with a maximum sentence of 10 years or more—such as murder, rape, armed robbery, offences of violence against the person, violent sex crimes and firearms offences. However, his plans throw up a couple of very interesting loopholes.
First, the exclusion will not apply to paedophiles convicted of dealing in child pornography, for which the maximum sentence is a paltry three years. Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman will now, therefore, consider extending his proposal either to cover paedophiles or—if he will accept our amendment to the Criminal Justice and Court Services Bill—increasing the sentence for that offence to 10 years.

Mr. Straw: As the right hon. Lady makes a serious point, I tell her that the consultative document that I published last week was just that—a consultative document. I welcome the comments that she has made on the matter, and understand entirely the case that she makes for special protection in respect of paedophiles. I shall take full account of her proposal and get back to her.

Miss Widdecombe: I am very grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for seeing good Conservative sense after we have drawn it to his attention. Now, let me try him again.
The right hon. Gentleman's proposed change in the rules will also not cover those who are convicted of dealing or trafficking in class C drugs, for which the maximum sentence is five years. Although we do not hear as much about class C drugs as we hear about heroin or cocaine, they are not harmless substances. They include the so-called date rape drug, rohypnol, and banned steroids used by athletes such as nandrolone, which got many headlines last year. Perhaps the Home Secretary will also consider extending the prohibition to people who deal in those drugs. I shall give way if he wants to jump up and agree.
I hope that the loopholes were a mistake. I am grateful to the Home Secretary for his promise today to look at proposals and consider afresh the changes that he is seeking to make. It would send out a wrong and dangerous message if he did not do so.
We saw on Monday the utter embarrassment of the Home Secretary and his colleagues when my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest, West (Mr. Swayne) highlighted the failure of child curfew orders, which appear to be a source of great hilarity to the Home Secretary. More than once, he has described them as
new powers to protect children under 10 from being drawn into crime.
However, they have not been used by a single local authority. In the 20 months that they have been available, there has not been a single application for one. He has been forced to admit that he will have to amend the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, because the great flagship measure that he trumpeted is not working.
Then we have the anti-social behaviour orders. The Minister of State, the right hon. Member for Brent, South (Mr. Boateng), told the House on Monday that 40 had been issued—less than one a week. Just half of those have been against juveniles, despite the Home Secretary's view, expressed last year, that they should be routinely used against the middle and older age groups of juveniles and young people—the 12 to 17-year-olds. Another Minister of State, the hon. Member for Norwich, South (Mr. Clarke), said in Westminster Hall on 1 March that the charge that the anti-social behaviour order was too complex and bureaucratic was well made.
The orders are certainly complex and not even their creator, the Home Secretary, understands them properly. On 12 July last year, he twice told the House that using the orders was "a last resort". Just three months later in October, he wrote an open letter to all local authorities urging them to use the orders, saying that they were not a measure of last resort. No wonder local authorities and the police are confused. The Home Secretary is even more confused and has passed that on to them.
The Government have consistently promoted those measures as a panacea for youth crime, but they have turned out to be nothing of the kind. Our proposals would take persistent young menaces out of an environment that is failing them and give them a real incentive to change.
The Government promised the electorate that they would do a great deal on law and order, but after three years we have falling police numbers, rising crime, thousands of convicted criminals being let out of jail early and a crisis of no confidence in the police. It is a crisis of the Home Secretary's making. Victims have been let down. The police have been let down. The public have


been let down. Those who voted Labour have been comprehensively betrayed. The only person with anything to thank the Home Secretary for is the criminal.

The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Jack Straw): I beg to move, To leave out from "House" to the end of the Question, and to add instead thereof:
welcomes the fact that recorded crime has fallen by 7 per cent. since March 1997, with domestic burglary down by 20 per cent. and vehicle crime down by 14 per cent.; applauds the Government's investment to boost police recruitment; supports the Government's strategy for tackling crime and the causes of crime through better prevention, improving the performance of crime and disorder partnerships, the police and the criminal justice system, more effective punishment of offenders and securing greater support and protection for victims and witnesses; backs the radical reforms of the youth justice system, including swifter punishment for persistent offenders; and notes that all this is in sharp contrast to the record of the previous administration when crime doubled and the number of offenders convicted fell by a third.
The best that one can say about the speech of the right hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Miss Widdecombe) is that at least it was brief. Her problem is that while the Leader of the Opposition has taken over her job, she has been spending too much time signing copies of her book.

Miss Widdecombe: rose—

Mr. Straw: I shall give way to the right hon. Lady in a moment, but I have only just begun.
I am always glad when right hon. and hon. Members do not become completely obsessed by politics but find other things to do with their spare time, so it is in the spirit of great affection in which I hold the right hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald that I congratulate her on the production of "The Clematis Tree", her first novel. [Interruption.] With her customary modesty, the right hon. Lady has described it as a very good book. I am still waiting for a signed copy. However, as any gift must be declared in the register these days, I should declare that I would be happy to pay for it.
I have not yet read the book, but I have read the reviews, which were like an allegory for her speech today. Some reviews you agree with and some you don't, Madam Speaker. One with which I entirely agree—and one which showed that her writing skills have fed through to her speeches—said of the book that it was completely devoid of plausible contemporary reference. One with which I wholly disagree is that the right hon. Lady is lacking a knack for fiction. She has shown today that she can produce fiction not only in novels, but in speeches.

Mr. Patrick McLoughlin: I am somewhat confused by what the Home Secretary has just said. Is it his practice only ever to read reviews before making his mind up, rather than reading the book itself?

Mr. Straw: If the hon. Gentleman wants a serious answer, the best books page that I read is to be found in the Financial Times. Rather than wasting my money, I see what is recommended by its expert reviewers and then buy it.
I welcome this opportunity to debate the Government's record on crime, not least because it already compares well with the appalling record of the Conservative party when it was in government. In the first two and a half years following the 1997 general election, overall recorded crime fell by 7 per cent., with domestic burglaries down 20 per cent. and vehicle crime down 14 per cent. In the first two and a half years of Margaret Thatcher's Government, crime went up by 15 per cent. In the same period of the Government led by the right hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Major), crime rose by 31 per cent.
The right hon. Lady can tinker with start dates and nit-pick over footnotes—we will no doubt hear more of that—but the incontrovertible truth is that over the 18 years of Conservative Government, crime doubled while the number of offenders punished fell by a third. Crime did come down towards the end of the Conservatives' period in office, but only back to the appallingly high levels of 1990.
The Tory record was clear—much more crime and many more criminals getting away with it. It is little wonder that the former Tory Home Office Minister David Mellor was moved to admit at the last election that the Conservative Party had
lost the plot on law and order.
In contrast, we have already put in place policies fundamentally to reform the way in which the criminal justice system works to ensure that it is tough on crime and tough on its causes. The programme includes tougher sentences for repeat and serious offenders; radical reform of the way we deal with young offenders; greater support and protection for victims and witnesses; effective action on preventing crime in the first place, and better detection when it does occur in rural and urban areas; and an overhaul of our system of criminal justice to cut delays and put an end to revolving-door justice.

Miss Widdecombe: The Home Secretary talks about being tough on the causes of crime. Presumably that is exactly what his child curfew orders and anti-social behaviour orders were meant to tackle. There has not been a single instance of the first and, for juveniles, there has been less than one every two weeks of the second. Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that his efforts have been the most abject failure?

Mr. Straw: Not for one second. I will refer to anti-social behaviour orders in a second, and we will want to know whether the right hon. Lady supports them or not. Residents, police and victims all support them.
On the issue of child safety orders—

Miss Widdecombe: Where are they?

Mr. Straw: I would like them to be used, but it is for local authorities to use them.
In the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, introduced by the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard), a number of offences were laid down that have not resulted in a single conviction. I do not complain about that. I thought it sensible to have such offences. The act has broadly worked well. The parenting orders in the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, which were derided, have been used


by the score in the pilot areas alone. People said that they would not work, but they are working extremely well. The reparation order, the action plan order and all the other orders that we have introduced to reform the youth justice system, left in such disarray by the Conservatives, are working and ensuring that fewer young offenders reoffend.
We are taking action to tackle the social conditions in which crime and criminality breed. We developed our policies by listening to those at the sharp end of the fight against crime: victims of crime, the police, councils, and Members of Parliament whose surgeries were full of constituents angry at the levels of crime and disorder in their communities. We also drew on the experience of the previous 18 years and on the reasons for the previous Government's failure to tackle the problems.
The fundamental reason for that failure on crime was the fact that the Conservatives did not have an overall strategy. Yes, during the 1980s they put money into the police, and numbers rose, but they coupled that with changes that disrupted the ability of the police to do an effective job, such as the flawed introduction in 1985 of the provisions in the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 and the disastrous way in which they established the Crown Prosecution Service a year later.
There was also the absence of any means or method of helping local communities to fight back against disorder and anti-social behaviour. There was even—I ask my hon. Friends to comprehend this—a sentencing regime that gave the green light to criminals to offend again and again, with the Criminal Justice Act 1991, under which the courts were to be prevented by law from taking previous convictions into account in determining whether and for how long an offender should go to jail. That incoherence and incompetence led the British people to lose faith in the Conservatives' ability to keep our communities safe.

Mr. John Bercow: Was it not an alarming admission on 8 May that no fewer than 11 prisoners have been illegally let out of jail early, before serving the minimum tariff required, including people convicted of drug trafficking, assault, burglary and sex with a minor? Why did the Home Secretary not consider that serious enough to justify a full statement to the House?

Mr. Straw: As the House knows, I am never slow in offering to make oral statements. Of course it is a serious matter, and no one denies it, but if the hon. Gentleman wants to start trading statistics about people who are let out of prison illegally and early, I might remind him, although I do not want to cause embarrassment to the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe or the right hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald, that 500 prisoners, not 11—the figure mounted day by day—were let out early owing to the incompetence of the service over which they were presiding in the summer of 1996.
The Conservative Government not only had no strategy: they did not understand that they needed one. As crime soared to its highest ever level, they did not have a clue what to do, so they cast around for scapegoats, for

Someone—anyone—to blame, provided that it was not themselves. Who did they choose? They did not choose the criminals, nor even the "liberal establishment". Instead, they alighted on the police.
As former Home Secretary Kenneth Baker remarked in his autobiography:
I found that while several of my ministerial colleagues and Tory MPs supported the police in public, they were highly critical of them in private.
The then Government's revenge against the police was the Sheehy report, which the then chairman of the Police Federation, Alan Eastwood, described as a "monumental blunder" that had
thrust this Service to the edge of a cliff.
It is fair to say that it was the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke), who has now been adorned as a member of the liberal establishment and who is a former Home Secretary and Chancellor, who nearly brought the police service to the edge of that cliff. However, it was the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe who failed utterly to rescue the situation—indeed, he did the reverse. He implemented the biggest ever cut in the housing allowance, which has been a major factor in the recruitment problems now affecting the London police. He also forced a real-terms cut in spending on the police in 1995–96 and promised thousands more officers while securing many fewer.

Mr. Michael Howard: The Home Secretary frequently refers to the fall in police numbers in the last four years of the previous Government and he has just referred to a fall in real-terms funding for the police in one of those years. What he never points out—and I would be grateful if he would confirm my figures, which come from the Library—is that during my time in office as Home Secretary, spending on the police increased in real terms by 4.2 per cent, whereas under his stewardship, spending on the police in real terms has fallen. In other words, while I was Home Secretary, chief constables had the money they needed to maintain police numbers had they chosen to do so, whereas the right hon. Gentleman simply has not given them the money. Is not that the difference?

Mr. Straw: I have great respect for the staff of the Library, but my figures—which are on the record and I am happy to exchange them with my old friends the Library statisticians—show a real-terms increase in spending of 4 per cent. between 1997 and 2000. For this year, budgets will rise by 4 per cent. while the GDP deflator will increase by only 2 per cent. I notice that the right hon. and learned Gentleman turned to the Tories' usual alibi of blaming someone other than themselves for the fact that police numbers fell. Of course, they do not give this Administration that concession. In the small print of his question, the right hon. and learned Gentleman said that he had provided the money—which, by the way, he had not—to the police service to spend on increased police numbers, if chief constables chose to do so. It turns out that the fall in numbers was not the right hon. and learned Gentleman's fault for cutting real-terms spending on the police in 1995–96 by 0.4 per cent., but the fault of the chief constables for not spending the money properly.

Mr. Howard: The Home Secretary has challenged my figures, but they show that in 1993–94 spending on the


police in real terms—at 1998–99 prices—was £7,001 million. In 1997–98, the last year for which I was responsible, it was £7,294 million. For 2000–01, it is only £7,369 million. If the Home Secretary compares the figures year by year, he will find a 4.2 per cent. increase in real terms in my period in office and a fall in his.

Mr. Straw: I am sorry to disagree with the right hon. and learned Gentleman. Such matters of arithmetic are not easy to resolve.

Mr. Howard: rose—

Mr. Straw: With great respect, I have already given way to the right hon. and learned Gentleman twice. My figures, which are produced by Government statisticians and based on Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy police statistics—on which his statistics will also be based, because they are the only source of those figures—tell a different story. The right hon. and learned Gentleman will have an opportunity later to explain away how he promised 5,000 additional officers in 1997 on budgets that could not conceivably deliver them.
How little has changed! In recent weeks, we have heard senior Tories sniping at our police service over the May day riots and over rural policing. They pay lip service to the police in one breath and constantly second-guess their professional competence in another. When the Tories are not making excuses and searching for scapegoats, they are holding up the war on crime. They waffle tough words—such as we heard today—but act to the contrary.
The Conservatives' motion talks about putting victims at the heart of the system, but the right hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald and the Tory party have vehemently opposed our Bill to stop the misery caused to victims by persistent offenders stringing out less serious cases by choosing jury trial when there are no good reasons for doing so.
Our Bill will help victims and speed up justice. I have long accepted that there are times when the so-called establishment mobilises against common-sense policies to tackle crime. This is one such occasion, but who do we find standing full square with the lawyers and the liberal establishment, and against the views of all the police associations, of the Lord Chief Justice, of the senior judiciary and all the magistrates? It is none other than the Leader of the Opposition, with the right hon. Lady in his wake.

Miss Widdecombe: The Home Secretary says that his proposals to reduce the automatic right to trial by jury will benefit victims. Does he agree that he has said that two thirds of the savings under the measure will be achieved as a result of fewer people being given prison sentences? That will happen because magistrates give fewer and shorter custodial sentences. How will it comfort and reassure victims to know that under his proposals more people who should be in prison will instead be on the streets?

Mr. Straw: The right hon. Lady knows very well that if magistrates believe that their sentencing powers are not adequate when someone is convicted in a magistrates court of an either-way offence, they can transfer that person to the Crown court for sentencing. She cannot

wriggle out of it and pretend that she does not know that. She also knows that our proposals will speed up justice and stop criminals spinning cases out to the point where victims are so fed up or intimidated that they will not go to the court—which, almost invariably, is further away from where they live than the magistrates court. She knows, too, that our proposal will save time wasted unnecessarily by prisoners on remand.
I turn now to the issue of anti-social behaviour orders. In government, the Conservative party refused to implement those orders. In opposition, it sought to water them down, and it now describes them as a gimmick in need of repeal.
As the House has heard, more than 40 ASBOs have been granted in the past year. I want many more such orders to be granted, in the same way as I want there to be many more convictions for theft, burglary, violence and other crimes. The Opposition, however, do not want there to be any anti-social behaviour orders at all. They want the protection that the orders offer removed altogether.
The Opposition want the three young thugs in Preston who were making the lives of the residents on the Callon estate a misery to be free to carry on their criminality. They want the same licence for thugs and criminals in areas across the country—both rural and urban—where anti-social behaviour orders are in force.
Anti-social behaviour orders are in force in 25 areas, which include Weston-super-Mare, Camden, Liverpool, Yeovil, Middlesbrough and parts of Sussex and Suffolk. They are helping in the prevention and detection of crime.

Mr. Desmond Swayne: Recently, a shopkeeper in Lymington went out to defend his property against a mob of drunken youths. A police car passed by. The policeman in the car looked at what was going on, and the car passed on. The shopkeeper subsequently made representations to the police station, but he was told that the policy was that an officer would not get involved in an incident if he was on his own and had no back-up—but the citizen involved was on his own and had no back-up. If the police are not prepared to intervene to assist citizens, how can any justice be had, ever?

Mr. Straw: I understand the hon. Gentleman's concern, and I congratulate the citizen to whom he refers. I can say, modestly, that I have been in that situation myself on four occasions over the past few years. However, the hon. Gentleman knows that there will always be some instances of unhappiness about the way in which an individual police officer has behaved in an individual circumstance. The answer is for the hon. Gentleman to take the matter up with the chief constable, or with the superintending officer in that area.
I am not alone in saying that anti-social behaviour orders are having an effect. Robin Searle, assistant chief constable of Nottinghamshire police, has said:
Through new legal powers the police and other agencies are also sending out a clear message to the most persistent young offenders, who previously thought that they were untouchable, that we will target them and take the strongest possible action.
The contrast between the actions of this Government and those of the previous Conservative Government is not simply that we are delivering crime reduction where the


Conservatives could not. It is that we also have a strategy for the long term. That strategy includes the new deal to get young people back to work, the sure start programme to help parents of vulnerable young children, the anti-drugs strategy, and a raft of policies to tackle social exclusion. Some 376 local crime reduction partnerships between the police, councils and others are up and running, pooling resources and effort into fighting crime.
The right hon. Lady complained that we had established targets for each police force area, in co-operation with those police force areas.—[Interruption.] She keeps waving her hands as an alternative to rational argument.

Madam Speaker: Order. I ask the right hon. Lady to contain herself while in a sedentary position. She has made her speech and should let the Secretary of State make his.

Mr. Straw: The right hon. Lady cannot help it, Madam Speaker—we should have sympathy for her plight. [Interruption.] I apologise, Madam Speaker, for any impertinence I may have shown to you.
The right hon. Lady waves her hands like a semaphore flag, which I have to decipher. I gather from her semaphore that she is not too keen on targets. Last year's crime figures, as they relate to previous years, show, underneath the overall totals, a very variegated situation. The right hon. Lady laughs. Of course we want to get overall crime figures down. Figures for some crimes are coming down, such as domestic burglary and violent crime, which we have targeted as a matter of policy.
Some police services do very much better than others even though they may have the same resources, powers and number of police officers. I am delighted to say that one of those is Lancashire which, with a less good budget settlement than many other forces, managed to reduce crime by 10 per cent. in the last full year.
What is true for police forces overall is also true for individual basic command units. That is why we have asked forces to set targets at a basic command unit level. I am astonished that the Tories should oppose that, because it was their policy in relation to schools 15 years ago. Far from the police objecting to them, the targets have been welcomed by the Association of Police Authorities and by Superintendent Peter Williams, the national secretary of the Police Superintendents Association of England and Wales.

Miss Widdecombe: I could not contain myself just now because I simply could not believe what we were being told. The right hon. Gentleman talks about crime reduction. Is crime going up, or is it not? Is it the first time in six years that it has gone up, or is it not? Is it happening under his stewardship, or is it not? Is it happening against a background of falling police numbers, or is it not? No matter how much waffle we hear, those are the facts. Will the right hon. Gentleman please address them?

Mr. Straw: I am addressing all those issues, and the waffle is coming from the Conservative party. The right hon. Lady knows very well that recorded crime overall rose by about 3 per cent. in the last year for which we

published full figures. Within that figure there are major variations. Therefore, there are lessons to be learned. Yes, there is the issue of overall resources; we are addressing it, something that the previous Government failed to do. There is also the issue of how those resources are best managed.
I regret that police numbers have fallen. However, the last people in the world to lecture us about police numbers are the right hon. Lady and other Conservative Members. The Conservatives promised an increase of 1,000 in police numbers in their 1992 manifesto and then began cutting police numbers in 1993, so that they fell by 1,400 by 1998. The Conservatives' pre-election spending plans, published just before the election, would have led to an even greater loss of police numbers, with no strategy to reverse that decline.
The right hon. Lady presented the police budget for 1997–98 in a debate in the House in January 1997. She is staring at the ceiling, praying that I will not remind her of what she said. She said:
I have already reminded hon. Members of the commitment…to provide funding for an additional 5,000 police officers over three years.—[Official Report, 29 January 1997; Vol. 289, c. 457.]
However, that commitment was like so many others made by the right hon. Lady and her party before 1997 and since: the commitments of the rattling can—empty and worthless.

Mr. Tim Collins: I hope that the Home Secretary can give a calm answer to my question. When does he propose to act on the report commissioned and received by the Home Office on the sparsity element in its funding formula for police forces? As the right hon. Gentleman may be aware, that is worth £2 million to the Cumbria constabulary and would make the difference between the continuation of reductions or turning them around and reversing them.

Mr. Straw: The hon. Gentleman raises an important issue. In the current police grant, £35 million is for sparsity. We shall be acting on the matter in the context of the comprehensive spending review. The Minister of State, Home Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich, South (Mr. Clarke) recently visited Cumbria—a very rural area—and talked to officers about the matter.

Mr. James Clappison: The Home Secretary has been in charge for three years, but he complains about police numbers under the Conservative Government. Will he confirm that police numbers have declined during the past three years? When does he expect police numbers to match those he inherited in 1997?

Mr. Straw: I confirm that police numbers have gone down. The hon. Gentleman knows that—there is no dubiety about the matter. What I am trying to do is to explain that decline. We decided to stick to the spending plans of the previous Government for the first two years—even though we did not have to do so—because we were not willing to make promises to the electorate that could not be delivered. We learned a few lessons in opposition—the current Opposition have failed to learn them—so, although I am happy to hear complaints about the fact that police numbers have gone down from police officers, police services or the public, the people who cannot complain about that reduction are members of the previous Administration.
Moreover, the Conservatives tried to trick the electorate by saying that police numbers would rise by 5,000—as the right hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald said just before the general election—while allocating an amount that ensured that numbers were bound to go down. We are dealing with the matter. We are injecting funds so as to reverse the decline in police numbers. This year, £59 million is ring-fenced from the crime fighting fund; there will be more next year to accelerate—in two years, rather than three—the recruitment of 5,000 officers more than previously planned. After those two years—

Several hon. Members: rose—

Mr. Straw: No, I shall not give way.
On the basis of the projections provided by police forces, we expect a return to the 1997 numbers. As for more police officers, that is a matter for the comprehensive spending review.
Many hon. Members were rather perplexed at how subdued the right hon. Lady was on Monday during Home Office questions. I was, too, until I read what she had said on Sunday on the BBC programme "On The Record", where she, and her spending plans, were taken apart by the relentless questioning of Mr. John Humphrys.
This matter is like the Tories' pensions pledges—they make a pledge in the morning and it falls apart in the afternoon. We saw that today. The right hon. Lady talks about honesty in sentencing; what she actually means is that she plans to cut sentences in half, with no licences for those people who come to the end of their period of imprisonment. Her plans will cost at least £1,900 million, but she gagged and fluffed—just as she did in the House—and tried to convince an incredulous Mr. Humphrys that the cost would be just a fraction of that amount—£200 million. This year, we have put an extra £300 million into the police service alone. The right hon. Lady's calculation is as worthless and hopeless as the ones she made before the election; it is doubly undeliverable, because under the Tories' so-called tax guarantee, there can be no extra spending anyway.
Oppositions can always make headlines. I know that; I spent 18 years in opposition. However, I also know that if Oppositions are to become Governments they require more than headlines. They need credibility; and to be credible, they cannot in one breath promise the earth on education, health, police, prisons and pensions and, in the next, promise to cut taxes. It simply does not add up.
The British people drove the Tories from office in 1997 not only because they had failed comprehensively on law and order, but because they broke the trust of the British people, cynically making one promise after another that they knew could not be delivered. By contrast, the promises that we made are being delivered—getting on top of the legacy of high levels of crime and of criminality with a strategy for the long term. We have put that strategy in place with the most fundamental reform of our criminal justice system in a generation to make our society safer and to allow people better to live their lives free from fear.
I urge the House to support our amendment.

Mr. Simon Hughes: We welcome this debate on crime and we welcome the opportunity to examine the Government's record and to hear what the Conservative party proposes to do.
First, I shall consider the Government's record just over three years on from the general election. It was perfectly valid for the right hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Miss Widdecombe) to remind the House that the Labour party went to the election with the theme of tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime. That was its selling point and message and we must judge what it has done against that claim.
Of course, there has been some good legislation, some good initiatives and some worthwhile and considered proposals. In my conversations around the country, I pick up that the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 is generally welcomed and that police and local authorities in England and Wales welcome the new crime partnerships. I also pick up from my conversations that the new structure for dealing with young offenders is a good initiative and that it is much more likely to deal with young people effectively. Certainly, there have been good initiatives on crime reduction, and it is not always the big national schemes, but the small local initiatives that count. In many areas, the Government's actions have been welcomed, as they have been by the Liberal Democrats over the years. The Government have been clear about certain forms of crime, such as racially motivated crime. They have deserved support and have made progress.
We do not come to the debate with the attitude that, by definition, all we can do is criticise the work of another political party. That would be an unreasonable and unfair starting point. However, we have to consider what works, a phrase that was inherited from the previous Conservative Government and used again by this one. The test is what works to prevent, detect and deal with crime.
Perhaps, because he was understandably concentrating on the Conservatives, the Home Secretary did not hear my attempts to intervene on him. I absolve him of responsibility for that, because he is normally willing and courteous in giving way. However, I understand that he may have had difficulty in picking up my requests to intervene.
Let me paint the picture of the serious position that we are in and that is a challenge to us all. We need to go from where we are and not where we would like to be. On Monday, I quoted Home Office statistics to the Minister of State, Home Office, the hon. Member for Norwich, South (Mr. Clarke) and—along with those published by the House of Commons Library, which are often prayed in aid—those statistics are the most authentic that we can quote. The latest figures show that, of 100 offences committed, only 45 per cent. are reported, only 24 per cent. are recorded, only 5.5 per cent. are cleared up and only 3 per cent. result in a caution or conviction. The figures are worrying whatever the level of crime.
The right hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald was wrong to deny that crime reached a peak under the Conservative Administration. In 1992, the number of recorded crimes was higher than it had ever been before or has been since. Although the figure goes up and down. we clearly want a system that, whatever the level of offences, prevents crime more effectively, detects it better and deals with it more effectively.
Let me share with the House the other statistic that I wish to quote. It shows that, of the men who are convicted and imprisoned, more than half reoffend within two years and, of those who are under 21, more than 70 per cent. reoffend within two years. In addition to the fact that people are not being deterred, something is badly wrong when, despite a rising prison population and a general trend for longer sentences, a significant number of people are coming back into the system. That is as important as other matters that should be addressed as policy areas.

Mr. Howard: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the proportion of those reoffending within two years of leaving prison is almost identical to the proportion of those who reoffend within two years of being sentenced in the community or having a probation order imposed on them? Whatever that statistic demonstrates, it certainly has no relevance whatever to the effect of prison on people inside prisons.

Mr. Hughes: The right hon. and learned Gentleman is right to argue that alternatives to prison do not suddenly prevent reoffending and that, in some areas, the figures are similar. However, if prison is to serve any purpose, it is meant to do two things. First, it should punish and deter and, secondly, like other sentences, it should have some benefit for offenders so that they are less likely to reoffend. However, we do badly in preventing people from reoffending.
I take the right hon. and learned Gentleman's point. We do badly in all our responses and, unless we cut the huge percentage of crimes committed by those who, in theory, are dealt with but for whom, clearly, the punishment does not work, we are not providing an adequate remedy.
The background to that includes the fact that, under the previous Government, convictions fell significantly, as objective figures show clearly. There were just under 2 million convictions in 1979 and just under 1.5 million convictions in 1997. There was one conviction for every eight crimes committed in 1985 and one conviction for every 14 in 1996. We must therefore ask ourselves how get to more convictions for those cases brought into system.
In this area, I disagree profoundly with the Home Secretary, whose solutions include reducing the right to choose jury trial. I do not think that that will have a significant effect on such matters, and is marginal to them. Clearly, the Home Secretary and his colleagues did not think that the matter was sufficiently important to be anything other than marginal at the last election when, as he conceded, he did not believe that reducing the right to jury trial played any role in dealing with crime. It was not part of the Labour party's programme or its manifesto.

Several hon. Members: rose—

Mr. Hughes: I shall give way to the Home Secretary.

Mr. Straw: I have followed the hon. Gentleman's speech carefully. He may like to know that the number of those convicted rose by 7 per cent. in 1998, although it fell a little last year. However, it remains significantly higher than it was. Part of our strategy for the criminal

justice system as a whole is to ensure that the police catch more people and that those people can be processed more effectively through the system.
The hon. Gentleman is right to point out the attrition rate and the big gap between the number of offences committed and the number of people who end up before the courts. However, whatever side one is on, if we are to close that gap, one must accept that the prison population must rise to cope with the fact that more offenders will be sent to prison, at least until we get on top of the problem.

Mr. Hughes: That may be the case and I accept that such matters are not simple. However, in this country and elsewhere, the pattern of rising prison populations does not necessarily mean that crime goes down. It does not work like that, which is why the Home Secretary came up with a recent initiative that I shall deal with now, although it is a bit out of context. We welcome the initiative if it means that we can punish, deter and begin rehabilitation by having shorter prison sentences, such as at weekends, or during the evening or day, which allow people to go on working and paying into the system—having them in prison costs the state a fortune—and if it works better than the present system. Other countries do that.
To take one simple example, people who are guilty of some type of football hooliganism offence are in some countries locked up at the very time that they would otherwise be going to a football match. That is a specific punishment, which relates to where they committed the crime and does not use up prison establishment resources, cost the state a huge amount or stop the person concerned earning and contributing to society.

Mr. John Hayes: The hon. Gentleman makes an interesting point about recidivism. The point made by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard), the former Home Secretary, which I think the hon. Gentleman missed, was that there is little evidence that less punitive means of dealing with offenders produces results in terms of recidivism. Indeed, what might be loosely described, for the sake of reference, as the liberal establishment's rehabilitative instincts have not borne fruit in dealing with repeat offenders.

Mr. Hughes: I understood the former Home Secretary's point clearly. He was saying that both types of response produce similar results on reoffending; I accept that.
Incidentally, in the great attack by the leader of the Conservative party on the liberal establishment he used a slightly ill-judged phrase. Would that the Liberals had been the establishment for the past 40 years. The two parties that have been the establishment have been the Conservative party and the Labour party. If people are to be blamed for this great failure of law and order and the increase in crime—I say with the greatest humility that many people can be blamed for many things and we can be blamed for some things—it cannot be us. The answer to the questions that we have consistently asked is not to be found in the liberal establishment. It lies in Conservative policy for most of the time and Labour policy for some of the time—neither of which has been in any way noticeably successful.

Mr. Oliver Heald: May I reassure the hon. Gentleman that, in the text of the speech


of my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition, "liberal" has a small "1"? Does he agree that targeting people who are committing offences ensures that they are charged with offences, convicted, sent to prison and therefore unable to commit further offences? Was not that the insight of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard), and did it not work?

Mr. Hughes: It is not terribly insightful; one hopes at least that when people are locked up they are not committing offences. In case the hon. Gentleman does not realise, having come to his job quite recently, most people who are locked up are let out after a—varying—length of time. If most who are let out offend as often as most who were not punished in the first place, one must ask whether the system is particularly useful and effective. The reality is that both offending and reoffending rates are way too high, to which we have not yet produced a response.
When I took over the job of Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, our senior researcher commended a few bits of reading to me. None of them keeps me wide awake for great periods. However, I commend a Home Office research study—I am sure that the Home Secretary and his colleagues read little else these days, apart from reviews in the Financial Times of books written by their opposite numbers—entitled, "Reducing Offending: An assessment of research evidence on ways of dealing with offending behaviour".

Mr. Bercow: Is it a racy read?

Mr. Hughes: No, not at all. The one message that I am trying to put to the House is that we must try to reach a conclusion on what works and implement those policies. We do not want simplistic, knee-jerk and ill-thought-out policies that respond more to a demand for political rescue than any desire for success in criminal justice and rehabilitation.

Mr. Heald: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Hughes: No, I will not.
One criticism that lies rightly at the door of the Conservative party, which initiated this debate, is that, in the past few months, there has been a more and more speedy procession of initiatives, most of which appear to ignore the evidence, or to be inconsistent, or to have not been thought out. When the Conservative party in one month appears to be arguing for mandatory sentencing but, as soon as somebody in Norfolk is convicted and receives a mandatory sentence, appears to be arguing against such sentencing, people in the country are entitled to ask whether it has thought through what it is saying—because it does not sound like it.

Mr. Bercow: If a man who is sentenced to six months' imprisonment for sex with a minor is released from prison after only six weeks, how does that deter him from reoffending, how does it deter others from imitating his offence and how does it reassure the public?

Mr. Hughes: Most people's initial reaction would be that it does not. I concede the proposition that the hon. Gentleman makes by inference and which was made from

the Front Bench. We on the Liberal Benches are carefully considering the policy of releasing people earlier than they might otherwise be released, although we have not yet reached a conclusion, because such policies send out messages and risks are involved. Of course it is appropriate to release people if they are assessed to be no risk, although risks have to be taken sometimes. However, the criminal justice system should not send out messages that suggest that serious offences—an adult having sex with a minor, which is clearly serious and unacceptable behaviour, for example—are fine and that those who commit them will be treated leniently.
Before the debate, my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton (Jackie Ballard) told me that she attended a recent seminar on the American experience. In some cases, if the court that passed the sentence is satisfied that a drugs habit has been adequately dealt with and that there is a prospect of the individual staying off drugs, it can reassess and perhaps reduce the sentence on the basis of that person's development in prison. I have learned not only in the House, but before being elected, that sentences must be tailored to a combination of factors, including not only the crime, but the individual. Therefore, the balance in the case to which the hon. Member for Buckingham (Mr. Bercow) refers seems to be wrong, but I clearly cannot comment further on the specifics.
We have rightly spent a lot of time talking about the police, so I shall not concentrate on that today. I have criticised the Government because police numbers at the end of the Parliament are projected to be lower than at the beginning. We believe that having fewer police is highly unlikely to prevent or detect and reassure the public. I have not visited a single county in England and Wales—the policing of which is the Home Secretary's responsibility—where people have told me that they are more comfortable because there are fewer police.
We all agree that adequate police numbers are needed in every community, whether rural or suburban; there is no selective option. The hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Mr. Collins) and others have the same interests for their village and rural communities as I have for my inner-city community. There is no difference between the demands. However, we have still not adequately recognised those who become the victims, despite the fact that the Government, the Conservative party and ourselves want to do so. I agree with the general proposition that the criminal justice system still does not look after victims adequately.
I want the Government to consider three propositions in that context, the first of which is general. We must better inform those who become victims of the sequence of events involved in the crime. Often, people are not given the information that would satisfy them that the crime of which they or their relatives were the victim has been dealt with adequately. Secondly, there must be a serious review of the criminal injuries compensation scheme because it has lost touch with reality. I cite a painful example involving a couple who live about a mile from the House.
Wendy and Chris Radford, my constituents, had a son and daughter. Last year, their 17-year-old son was attacked on his way to work early in the morning by a male, who was found guilty, convicted and sentenced for manslaughter. The Criminal Injuries Compensation Board offered compensation for the loss of their only son. They received the maximum—£10,000—although they were


not after the money as they are both in work. They see other people in other life circumstances receiving compensation. For example, someone who had been under stress at work received £175,000. I do not mean to be vulgar, but they see someone who was caused mental stress after being plagued by someone who followed her around at school holding what is described in a newspaper as a "chocolate willy" receive £101,000. They produced examples of people who received tens or hundreds of thousands of pounds in compensation under the criminal injuries compensation scheme, although it is said that a value cannot be put on a life lost. We should consider how victims are dealt with under the civil damages and criminal justice systems.
Let me make a third request, which I realise is controversial. I should be grateful if the Home Secretary and his colleagues, along with us and others who are interested, would consider ways in which victims and their relatives could be integrated appropriately in the criminal justice system before the passing of sentence.
Let me give a simple example. Soon after I was elected, the son of near neighbours of mine was attacked, and subsequently died as a result. They went to the trial, which took place at the Old Bailey. There were convictions, although of relatively less serious charges. From the beginning to the end of that case, no one formally asked those people anything, and they were never able to, as it were, put a statement into the criminal justice process. They were never able to describe the effect of that death on them.
I have seen families destroyed, mentally as well as emotionally, by the injuries and deaths of relatives, and I have seen those directly involved destroyed. I do not think we can pretend to victims that the criminal justice system works well if we have independent prosecutions on behalf of the state and society involving—I have done this, so I know about it—such long mitigations by the defence on behalf of persons who are convicted, but giving the victim no opportunity to say anything formally. I do not think it inconsistent with justice for the defendant to give victims or their representatives opportunity to speak, although that must clearly happen after conviction. I ask the Government, and the Home Secretary specifically, to think about the issue.
Let me make two more brief points. The first is topical: it relates to an announcement made this week. We must move quickly on the involuntary manslaughter corporate liability agenda, to which the Government very properly responded in their paper. Throughout my time here, people have complained that practices on building sites that have led to deaths have attracted derisory fines for the construction companies which, directly or indirectly, have been responsible for those deaths. Corporate liability is required: someone must carry the can.
It was in my constituency, or on one of its boundaries, that the Marchioness sank 10½ years ago. At the end of the day, none of the corporate entities that owned the vessel that collided with the Marchioness were liable: no one carried the can. Another example mentioned in the paper to which I referred earlier relates to those who are found guilty of driving under the influence of drink or drugs. I believe that the penalties imposed on those convicted of killing, maiming or injuring while driving, generally, a vehicle—although this could apply to vessels

or to aeroplanes, for instance—are often far too lenient. We must make people take responsibility for their actions, if the link between a sense of duty and personal responsibility and actions and reactions is not to be completely lost.
My last point is this. I have become convinced—our amendment mentions this specifically—that we should devote as much urgency as the Government devoted to nursing recruitment after a couple of years and are, I hope, now devoting to police recruitment, to the recruitment of people who are qualified and able to deal with drug addicts and drug offenders, so that we can prevent them from reoffending and returning to their addiction.
Of course, the dealers who make money from drugs at others' expense need to be dealt with as soon as possible, because they are real villains in society. However, my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton and I, and others, are regularly told by people including experts that even when it is believed that someone should be referred to drug treatment, that person will have to wait for weeks, or months, by which time it is often too late.
There are good initiatives in terms of work in prison and after prison, but, in far too many cases, people go out of that door and their chance of having work, a decent home environment and the help that they need to stay off drugs—from which they have been released while in prison—is not there. I hope that Ministers will respond positively, and find the funds, the recruitment mechanisms and the commitment to ensure that we prioritise the drugs menace highly. Because of that menace, many people commit crime, but many can be released from it and kept free of it.
Liberal Democrats have said from these Benches that the priorities are preventing and detecting crime and dealing with it effectively. If the Government concentrated even more on that agenda and somewhat less on taking away the liberties of the citizen—as they are doing in a Bill upstairs in Committee to reduce people's ability to choose a jury trial—they would better serve the public and, indeed, their supporters, who elected them to do the first, but not the second.

Mr. Tony Lloyd: Fear of crime is almost certainly the biggest single political issue that my constituents face—it is above concerns about pensions and anything else on the political agenda. In the light of that, I must say that the attack on the Government by the Opposition is unwelcome. It is unwelcome not because there is not a debate to be had about crime and crime reduction, but because, when we trivialise the issue and make it a matter of party political knockabout, we do a major disservice to the real interests of millions and millions of people. I hope that we can have a much more intelligent debate that focuses on the real issues.

Mr. Heald: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Lloyd: No, if the hon. Gentleman will forgive me.
The Government have already done an awful lot. Many things have been welcomed by my constituents, but the message that they would expect me to give the Government is that there is still a long way to go and not much time for us to make those changes.
Recently, I conducted a survey on crime in one of my local areas. What was astounding was the enormous response to that survey and the overriding concern that people in that community had about the issue of crime and crime in their communities. People feel unsafe—they feel unsafe in their homes and unsafe on the streets. Some people feel very unsafe—so much so, it destroys the quality of their life.
The hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes) mentioned drugs. It is right to say that, as long as we keep people in the queue for drugs treatment, we are simply recycling people: they are going back on to the streets and committing further crime, which is not good for those individuals and disastrous for society more generally. I know that drug treatment is an integral part of policy, but there is much more for us to do.
My constituents recognise that the issue of crime is much more complicated than simple slogans about who is tougher on the criminal. It is about a whole societal approach. They still want a Government who, like the present one, are committed to cracking down on unemployment. That is why they do not accept the bogusness of the Conservative Government of the past, who doubled crime on the back of the destruction of the communities in which my constituents live.
One of the things of which we should be aware is that trust in the police is much more fragile now than at any time that I can remember. When I go to public meetings about policing, I am struck by how strong the reaction of local people is and by how much the emphasis has changed—it is no longer on the local authority or the Government failing. The basic feeling is that the police are not performing the role that is expected of them. Although that is unfair in some ways, there are issues that must be addressed.
I welcome the clear targets being given to the police. I welcome them for my own police force because it is sometimes difficult to know what the aims and ambitions of the police and senior police management are. It is important that the public understand the strategies, aims and ambitions, but I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will recognise, too, that sometimes the targets that have been set seem crude and narrow to people on the streets. The public's priorities are more wide ranging than those expressed so far by the Government or by the police. The public say to me that there is a lack of focus.
One of the biggest issues facing communities throughout the country is nuisance. It may seem almost trivial in the grand scheme of things, and I shall be talking about much more serious crimes, but when groups of young people are about quite petty crime that creates fear and disharmony in local communities, which is devastating or destructive.
I recently took up with the local police force the serving of drinks to those under the permitted age. I received a long letter in response, but I did not get what I wanted. I wanted a commitment that the police would take the offenders to court and that their licences would be taken away. That would give a clear message to all those who seek to abuse the law and participate in the process of giving alcohol to young people, which causes the sort of nuisance about which my constituents complain.
My constituents complain legitimately about the slow police response when a crime is being committed and where there is chronic criminality. In West Gorton, one

of my constituents—Nora Peyton, a wonderful woman—persistently challenged local drug dealers. As a result, her home was attacked and she was shot at by young people. Nevertheless, she had to wait for about three months for the local police to crack down and make the necessary arrests. Once the police acted, the situation improved immeasurably. The quality of life in the West Gorton community is now massively better than it was. However, three months was too long to wait.
There are issues about the culture of the police, which is sometimes thought to be too defensive. It sometimes leads to victims being blamed instead of being embraced in a partnership. A local police officer told one of my constituents, a victim of robbery, "What do you expect, sir, living where you do? If you want to avoid crime, move away from the area." That type of police officer is massively damaging to morale and the relationship between the public and the police. They have no place in modern policing. They constitute a minority, but they give the police a bad name.
We do not have enough police. In my constituency, Greater Manchester does not have enough police to deploy. An inner-city area has massively more problems than other areas. We do not have enough police in Greater Manchester, and I hope that that message will be taken on board. I will not entertain the Opposition's argument about police numbers, as when they were in government they took many police officers away from my community. However, it is an issue that the Government must address in the context of the comprehensive spending review.

Mr. Heald: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that during the Conservative years the number of police constables continually increased? One of the National Audit Commission's criticisms of the present Government is that they have reversed that trend. Does he not agree that that has made a difference?

Mr. Lloyd: I do not agree. My constituents saw a massive increase in crime and a police force that became beleaguered by the sheer scale of criminality. The numbers game is an interesting one to play, but when in government the Conservatives failed communities, and not only in inner-city areas. They failed the nation, and they should remember that to their shame.
On a more positive note, there are many good things happening in policing, both nationally and locally. Some of the more general initiatives that the Government are taking, such as new deal and sure start, are making serious and important impacts in my community. There is a much better focus by the police and more intelligent policing. Some of the experiments in Salford, a neighbouring area to my constituency, are important in terms of how the police can crack down on local criminality by focusing on its sources. Local area partnerships are successful, although they are still new and not all are consistently good. We must raise the worst standards to the best. Nevertheless, the partnerships are making a big difference.
The multi-agency approach to crime is having an enormous impact in ensuring that those who are responsible for the majority of crimes are targeted, and sometimes before criminality becomes an issue, by dealing with the underlying social issues. We have had success with the implementation of the anti-social


behaviour order process. Ten such orders have been made in the Manchester area, the first being in my constituency. That case involved a group of young thugs who terrorised the local community. However, the process is far too complicated and we need to refine it and make it easier.
One of the most ridiculous aspects of that first case was that the stipendiary magistrate in Manchester refused to allow the names of those young thugs to be published. It was only after a campaign in the Manchester Evening News, for which it deserves credit, that that decision was reversed when the anti-social behaviour order went to appeal and the names could be made available.
The police are good at ensuring that anti-social behaviour orders are made. The Government's youth offenders initiative is already having a remarkable effect. The police, along with other agencies, have targeted 77 young people who they believe are responsible for about a quarter of youth offences in the city of Manchester. That is a significant step. We are still waiting for the Greater Manchester police and the court process to narrow the time it takes for cases involving young offenders to get to court.
Local schemes have been enormously important. Under the Home Office funded scheme, Manchester has had £0.5 million for closed circuit television and burglary prevention initiatives, and we hope to get help with projects on domestic violence. The local programme from the city council has matched that money with 65 schemes involving everything from gating back entries to make people feel more secure and to prevent intruders, to CCTV and home security for the elderly, who often fear violence more than most.
I want to raise some further issues about which my hon. Friend the Minister may like to think. We have to change the police culture. We still have some way to go to ensure that they work in partnership with local people and other local agencies. We must address the problem of a lack of police.
The biggest single issue that I would like to draw the House's attention to concerns my constituency's undeserved but nevertheless difficult reputation for murder, which is the most violent of crimes. It is often murder by young men of young men, sometimes involving drugs and sometimes not.
One of the problems that has emerged in recent years is the extremely low success rate for bringing offenders to court. The police put time and effort into the most serious cases: there is no suggestion that they spare any effort to bring those offenders to book. However, they face two important problems, the first of which is witness intimidation. That issue ranges across all crimes, but it is a major problem in murder cases.
The police tell me that when they have taken a witness to court—who may be reluctant at first—and they have asked the judge whether the witness can give evidence behind a screen, the judge has said that that is not possible because on appeal the case would eventually go to the European Court or to our own courts under the European convention on human rights, and giving evidence in that way would be deemed to be unacceptable. It is unacceptable to me that witnesses cannot be given protection in the court process for that reason.
I should like to raise with my hon. Friend the question of cost. Forensic science is enormously expensive. The police tell me that it costs £1,500 for each low-copy DNA test, which can detect a fingerprint on a spent cartridge. That is important for the detection of crime. If witnesses do not come forward, the police can use modern science to come to their aid. However, they have to consider the budget because the prices charged for such forensic science are excessive. That problem must be tackled, and I hope that the Minister understands that.
I am convinced that the Government have already made an important start in rolling back public attitudes and giving more reassurance. We have a long way to go, but the changes that my hon. Friend and his colleagues are making are transforming the public's view in my area of the way in which society operates. It is a change that can only be for the better.

Mr. Michael Howard: I did not intend to speak in the debate this afternoon. I had come to listen and to put a limited factual point to the Home Secretary in an intervention, but I have been provoked into making a speech by the hotch-potch of misdescription, exaggeration and sheer distortion that we heard from the Home Secretary. I am grateful to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for giving me the opportunity to make this speech, which I hope will be relatively brief.
The hon. Member for Manchester, Central (Mr. Lloyd) made an interesting speech. I thought it a bit rich when he accused my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Miss Widdecombe) of making what he wrongly described as a knockabout attack on the Government's record. I do not know where the hon. Gentleman was during all those years when we were subjected to attacks from the Opposition Benches that were so crude that they did not merit the description "knockabout". I imagine that he was present on at least some of those occasions and has not totally forgotten them.
The hon. Gentleman made one point on which I wish to join him. He paid tribute to one of his constituents who stood out against the drug dealers and, in time and with the help of the police—he said that it did not come quickly enough—had managed to combat effectively the activities of drug dealers in that part of his constituency. I came across a number of examples of that when I was Home Secretary. The people involved—often in the least privileged communities, acting with enormous courage in the face of real risk—deserve enormous credit, praise and tribute, which they rarely get. Not only their local community but the whole of our national community owes people who take that kind of stand in those difficult circumstances a great debt.
The first of the two points that I wish to cover is the crime figures. In, I think, the first debate that took place after I became Home Secretary, the then shadow Home Secretary, now the Prime Minister, issued a challenge to me. He asked whether I would be content for my tenure in office to be judged by what happened to the crime figures. I suppose that as they had doubled between 1979 and 1993—I shall come back to that point in a moment—he thought that he was on pretty safe ground.
I confess that I was not sufficiently confident of my ability to turn things round in the relatively short time that I would have available to take up his challenge, so, to my


eternal regret, I declined to accept his challenge. I wish that I had done so because between 1993 and 1997 we saw a fall in crime of about 18 per cent. We never hear that figure from the Home Secretary when he talks about crime under the previous Government, or, indeed, from the Liberal Democrats. We hear only that for the period as a whole from 1979 to 1997 crime doubled under the Tories. It is an accurate figure—it did. It more than doubled between 1979 and 1993. What they never say is that crime had increased even faster under the previous Labour Government between 1974 and 1979 and had increased under the Conservative Government before that.
The truth is that crime had increased for all those years. My right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition was right to draw attention to that fact and to the relationship between it and the extent to which the liberal establishment held sway throughout that period.

Mr. Simon Hughes: I have always accepted and confirmed on the record that whereas 1992 was the peak in crime figures, after that they dropped. One of the reflections that I do not hear very often from the Leader of the Opposition is that the period when crime dropped—when the right hon. and learned Gentleman was Home Secretary—was when the right hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Major) was Prime Minister. Crime rose under Baroness Thatcher and dropped when the right hon. and learned Gentleman was Home Secretary. That is hardly an indictment, even for the Tory party, of the liberal establishment.

Mr. Howard: The hon. Gentleman is wrong. There was a classic conspiracy—I do not want to spend the whole of my remarks on this—between the criminal justice establishment and the civil servants in the Home Office and the Treasury to keep down the number of people in prison because prison is expensive. One of the classic objectives of criminal justice policy during most of that time—the hon. Gentleman is one of the few people who still subscribe to it—was to keep as few people in prison as possible.
The truth is that one of the key elements in the turnaround in crime during my period of office—it was not the only element; there were others as well—was the increase in the prison population. I believed, and I said, that prison works, in the sense that—as my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Hertfordshire (Mr. Heald) said just a few moments ago—while persistent, prolific, professional criminals are in prison, they cannot commit crime.
The other day, in a debate on these topics, I was very interested to see the junior Home Office Minister in the other place—I do not know whether the Minister of State would himself subscribe to this—come out with the phrase that the Government "believe that prison works". I was very pleased to hear him utter that phrase. When I was being criticised for uttering those words—the criticism was widespread and very considerable—I do not recall anyone from the Labour party coming to my support and saying that he agreed with that proposition. That policy, however, was a key factor in the fall in crime.
My point is simply that if one accepts the proposition that prison works in that sense—as the Government do, according to the junior Minister in the other place—it makes no sense at all deliberately and as a matter of

policy to let people out of prison before the earliest date on which they would otherwise be released. It grieves me that crime has now started to rise again, and I hope that the increase is a temporary blip. I am not sure, however, that it will be.
If one is looking for the causes of that rise in crime, it is difficult to escape the inference that the early release of prisoners—my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone and The Weald, in opening the debate, gave all the details of the numbers and the extent to which those who had been released early had already begun to commit crimes again—in some way and to some extent is connected to the fact that crime has now started to rise again.

Mr. Heald: Does my right hon. and learned Friend recall that a little earlier, when I said that he had had that insight, the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes) commented "not much of an insight"? Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that it was really quite a deep insight, and that the danger is that it is being lost again—not only in the early release scheme, but in the worrying idea that we should imprison people from nine to five, rather than from 12 to 12 and at weekends? Does he fear that what is happening is that the Home Office empire is striking back?

Mr. Howard: There is a good deal in what my hon. Friend says. It was striking that the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes), in one and the same breath—I am constantly amazed at his ability to speak without drawing breath—said, "Of course we all share that insight. But if people reoffend and are reconvicted as soon as they leave prison, what is the point?" The point is that they do not reoffend to any greater extent having been in prison than they do if they are dealt with in some other way, and that, while they are in prison, the public are safe from their attentions. That is the point.

Jackie Ballard: Does the right hon. and learned Gentleman think that the exceedingly high crime rates and the very high prison population in the United States are proof that prison works? Is he aware that although crime rates are still very high in the United States, they have been gradually decreasing for the past 20 years? In the United States, there is no correlation between a reduction in crime rates and whether a conservative or liberal sentencing policy is in effect. Reduced crime rates are correlated with access to employment and housing and the maintenance of close family ties—all of which are damaged or broken when someone is in prison.

Mr. Howard: The hon. Lady simply could not be more wrong. She needs to look at the evidence much more carefully. I commend her particularly to a study that has been done by Professor Charles Murray—who I think shared a platform with the Home Secretary at a very recent conference on these matters. His research shows very clearly that, both in the United States and in the United Kingdom, as the risk of being sent to prison increases, crime falls. Graphs demonstrate that fact very clearly. One of the things that happened when I was Home Secretary was that the risk of being imprisoned increased


quite significantly and crime fell. One can see exactly the same pattern happening in the United States. There is a very direct correlation between the two developments.
Those were my only comments on crime figures. I should like, however, to say a word about police numbers. Just as one never hears the Home Secretary talking about crime in the last four years of the previous Government, when crime fell, but only about crime doubling over the whole period of that Government, so one never hears him talking about police numbers over the whole of the period of that Government, when numbers increased by 16,000, but only about the last four years, when the numbers did indeed fall—although, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone and The Weald was right to point out earlier, the number of constables on the front line continued to increase.
I should like to set out very clearly the position on funding because I think—I am not certain—that, in my earlier intervention, I may inadvertently have read out an incorrect figure. If I did, I certainly want to put that right. The figures are absolutely indisputable. In 1993–94, Government provision for police expenditure in England and Wales—in real terms, at 1998–99 prices—was £7,001 million. In 1997–98, the year in which I left office, the figure was £7,294 million. That was a real-terms increase of 4.2 per cent. In the current year, 2000–01, the figure is £7,278 million: a real-terms reduction.
It is true that we passed legislation that gave chief constables much more power to spend as they saw fit the money that was made available to them. I ensured that the United Kingdom police service had the money that it needed to maintain police numbers—if that is what they decided to spend their money on. We did provide the money that was necessary to make good the previous Prime Minister's pledge to give police enough money to recruit 5,000 extra officers. The difference between that period and the period since the general election is that, whereas there was a 4.2 per cent. real-terms increase in spending on police during my time, there has been a real-terms decrease under the current Home Secretary. In other words, in my time chief constables had the money they needed to maintain police numbers, had they chosen to do so; under the current Government, they simply have not had the money.

Mr. Clive Efford: Would the right hon. and learned Gentleman care to comment on the effect of the implementation of the Sheehy report on the number of Metropolitan police officers? One of my police officer constituents told me that one of his colleagues—who pounds the same central London beat as he does, but joined after the report was implemented in 1994—is paid more than £400 less for doing exactly the same job. My local police inspector told me that that factor is the biggest barrier to increasing the number of Metropolitan police officers.

Mr. Howard: Most of the Sheehy report was not implemented. The report made a number of recommendations—earlier in the debate, we heard about the police service's reaction to those recommendations—but, for the most part, the report was not implemented. Some of the report was implemented, including the provision to which the hon. Gentleman has referred.
In looking at the provision for housing allowance, it was quite difficult to justify that type of provision. It is made in very few other jobs. It did not seem the best way of dealing with the problem of recruitment. However, to take housing allowance away from people who had joined the police service on the basis that they would receive it also was very difficult to justify. Therefore, we said that those who have the allowance will keep it, but that those who join the police service after the decision had been taken and announced—they knew exactly what the terms and conditions were going to be when they decided to join—will not get it.
Of course, decisions that are taken against a particular labour market background cannot be expected to last for ever. Government decisions are not set in stone, never to be reviewed. The circumstances in the London labour market have changed and it is probably more difficult to recruit officers now. If circumstances have changed and certain policies are no longer appropriate, they should be reviewed. I have explained the reasons for my decision. It seemed perfectly reasonable at the time, but these things need to be looked at as circumstances change.

Mr. Efford: Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman confirm that, as a result of his decision, new police recruits were £400 worse off and that that has made it more difficult for the Metropolitan police to recruit officers, who come primarily from outside London and find it difficult to cope with the costs of that move?

Mr. Howard: I do not know how many times the hon. Gentleman wants to put the same question and get the same answer. I do not know the exact numbers, but it is true that the terms and conditions were changed. Police officers who joined knew what the terms and conditions were. At that time, there was an abundance of applicants to join the Metropolitan police and there continued to be a healthy surplus of applicants for some time after the introduction of that change. That may well no longer be the case. It was several years ago and circumstances have changed, so it may be appropriate to look at the situation again.
My final plea is simple. I hope that when the Home Secretary explains what is happening and tries to justify Government policy, he gives the whole picture, not just part of it. When he is talking about police numbers, perhaps he will be good enough to say that, although they may have fallen in the last few years of the Conservative Government, they increased by 16,000 between 1979 and 1997, that during the four years when they were falling, the number of constables continued to increase and that during those years the amount of money made available to the police was enough to maintain the numbers, in sharp contrast with the position under his stewardship. I cannot stop him from talking about crime doubling under the Tories, but perhaps, to complete the picture, he might point out that it rose even faster under the previous Labour Government, that it started to rise again under his Government and that the only occasion on which it has consistently fallen—the biggest fall since records were first kept in the middle of the 19th century—was between 1993 and 1997, when it fell by nearly 18 per cent.

Mr. Bob Blizzard: Most of what I have to say is based on the experience of my constituency, but I hope to draw out some general points of wider relevance.


I moved to Lowestoft, where I now live, in 1986. Every week when I looked in the local paper, I saw reports that a garage had been broken into and garden furniture stolen, or that a house had been broken into and a purse or some jewellery stolen. I began to form the view from those press reports that I had moved into a community with massive amounts of crime. After a while I discovered that those crimes were reported because they were virtually the only ones and garden tool theft was newsworthy.
I also had a pleasant surprise when I looked at my home contents insurance policy with Co-op insurance, because it had a special low rate for Suffolk—I believe that it was the only county to which the rate applied. Those relatively low levels of crime were my benchmark.
Over the next 11 years, I saw crime rise and rise. Trends in my constituency were part of the overall picture, in which crime doubled under the previous Government. The right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) says that that happened in the early years. In my part of the country we tend to lag behind and crime continued to rise in the later years. In the view of people where I live, the Conservative party ceased to be the party of law and order.
With the election of the new Labour Government came very high expectations, particularly in view of the Prime Minister's slogan of being tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime. However, we had to stick to another manifesto commitment—to keep to the Tory spending limits for the first two years. That was an important commitment for many people who voted for us. It was necessary to bring the deficit in the public finances into balance and contribute to the economic stability of the country. We should remember that those were Tory spending limits. Had the Conservatives won the election, they would not have spent any more than we did in the first two years.

Mr. Howard: We hear that trotted out time after time by Labour Members, but it is complete tosh. If the hon. Gentleman knew the first thing about how any Government worked, he would know that three-year expenditure plans are the best estimate that can be made at the time, but they are revisited at every subsequent expenditure round. The figures are always adjusted. If the hon. Gentleman looks back over the 18 years of our Government, he will see that such adjustments always took place. It is tosh to suggest that we would necessarily have stuck to those figures. The hon. Gentleman should recognise that it is ridiculous.

Mr. Blizzard: We now know that the Conservatives promise to spend even less on fighting crime because of their tax guarantee. They launched a plethora of pre-manifesto guarantees last autumn, including the patients guarantee, the parents guarantee and the rest, but there was not one guarantee on law and order or crime fighting. That reflects the fact that they do not intend to spend any more money on fighting crime.

Mr. Heald: Police numbers in Suffolk have fallen by 30 since the general election. We have pledged to provide the money to restore those numbers. What does the hon. Gentleman want to happen?

Mr. Blizzard: I shall talk about police numbers in Suffolk later.
Crime is now high on people's list of concerns. In my constituency, it now rivals unemployment, which has been a long-standing concern. I shall focus on developments in my area in the past three years. However, it is not easy to make comparisons from the figures. This Government have been more honest than the previous Government in asking the police to compile statistics that more accurately reflect levels of crime. The performance summary from Suffolk police's annual report shows that total crime went down in 1997–98 from the level in the Tory years, but it went up again in the following year, reflecting a new method of calculation. House burglaries per thousand dwellings went down in 1997–98 and again the following year. The story on violent crime is not so good, because it has risen, but the police are now required to use a wider definition of violent crime when compiling their statistics.
In the top corner of the performance report on crime management, Suffolk police write:
Changes in the way the Home Office records offences make comparisons with previous years' figures difficult. However, the overall underlying trend is still downwards.
I am encouraged by that.
Another difficulty in making comparisons concerns the boundaries one uses. If we take Suffolk as a whole, the crime rate is one of the lowest in the country. The county is at the bottom of the league table—a league table one relishes being bottom of. That is a tribute to the police in Suffolk, and to the honest people of the county. Of course, crime is not uniform across the county and is higher in some parts than in others.
All too often, as soon as one mentions Suffolk—a rural shire county—statistics are used to advance arguments about rural policy. However, Suffolk contains urban areas such as Lowestoft and Ipswich: areas where crime is highest in the county. Crime is still an issue in rural areas. Where previously there has been scarcely any crime at all, one notices even a slight rise in crime. The rate may remain relatively low, but people fear crime and do not want it to become as bad as it is in other places in the country. Often, those people have sought retreat in a shire county from somewhere where there has been higher crime.
The thin blue line is thin in rural areas, and single police officers often have to cover a load of parishes. Where there is a crime, the response is sometimes not as good as the people or the police would like. I say that because the arguments advanced on sparsity are valid. I am pleased that my hon. Friend the Minister appears to have accepted the arguments. We look forward to a positive outcome from the comprehensive spending review on these issues, as Suffolk—like other parts of the country—needs more police.
Not all Suffolk is rural, and most of the crime in my constituency is in the town which, unfortunately, has one of the highest rates in the county. Even now, however, crime rates in Lowestoft are about average for the country. The conditions that breed crime, or are associated with it, have in parts of Lowestoft been deemed comparable to inner cities by the director of public health, in his annual report. Unemployment, deprivation and low pay statistics back that up.
I am pleased that the area has single regeneration budget status, assisted area status and objective 2 status from the Government, and there is a new bid for other


parts of the SRB in the next round. It is important to tackle the causes of crime, but that takes time and people are rightly concerned about tackling crime now.
The perception where I live is that crime is rising. On election day, I went to vote and found that my next-door neighbour had been burgled. I was told that a lot of homes in my area had been burgled also. People who have been burgled are not happy voters and some do not bother to vote at all.
Looking at the figures for Lowestoft is difficult because of changes in the sector boundary and the methods of measuring crime. It appears that the trend in house-breaking in the past three years has been about level. The trend in violent crime has been up but, thankfully, the trend in the dealing and supply of drugs has gone down. I want to pay tribute to the previous chief inspector, Owen Lower, and the current chief inspector, John Everitt—and their teams—for the work they have done.
The good news is that following the two years in which we kept to the Tory spending limits, there is now clear evidence of the Government's three-pronged attack on crime working in Lowestoft. I was delighted that, on 17 May, we heard the announcement that the 5,000 extra police would come in this year and next. That means that, this year in Suffolk, there will be 31 extra police, with 14 extra the year after.
There will not just be 31 extra police, but 12 on top of that. Suffolk police carried out a brave and creditable exercise by consulting the people of Suffolk on what they wanted from the police. They went round the county, held public forums and even had electronic voting. The police asked people if they wanted to pay more to have more police, how much they were willing to pay and how many police they would like. As a result, Suffolk police are funding an additional 12 police this year from an increase in council tax. I commend the police on that, and I hope that my area gets a good share of them. It is certainly good news for Suffolk as a whole.
On police numbers, I had a conversation with the chief constable a few months ago in which I asked him this—if money appeared on his table, what would he do with it? Chief constables, of course, are responsible for police numbers. He said that apart from one or two pieces of kit, he would use the money to employ civilians. By doing so, he could get more police out from behind their desks and on the beat. I say that to demonstrate how we can have more police on the beat, even though it may appear that police numbers have not increased or decreased. I hope that Conservative Members will take note of that.
The other good news is the £193,000 awarded by the Government for more CCTV cameras. The cameras have made a difference. Sometimes the public are disappointed with the results from these cameras, and we must improve the way in which they are used. However, they are very welcome.
As part of the Government's crime reduction programme, we received £33,000 under the reducing burglary initiative. That has been targeted on the parts of Lowestoft with the greatest need, and it is a partnership between the local authority and Suffolk police. It is part of a larger multi-agency programme aimed at tackling youth crime.
The engagement locally by the police in crime reduction partnerships has been good. My local authority has responded positively and has carried out audits. It was one of the first in the country to succeed with an anti-social behaviour order. It is difficult for the district council to play its part in the partnerships as well as it would like.
What tends to happen is that the lead officer for the partnership is often busy already and sees it as just another thing to do. The same is true of the local drugs action team; the officer nominated is usually a busy person. Following the comprehensive spending review, I would like to see money passported through to authorities to employ specific additional people to drive the partnerships forward. They will succeed if we do that.
There is so much in the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, including the potential for community involvement in crime prevention and reduction. If we can harness that, we can do much more. I would like neighbourhood wardens to be employed—using SRB money, if possible—to support the police. Such wardens could do valuable work in gathering information and intelligence, visiting people and liaising with schools, for example, to deal with children who cause trouble on the way to and home from school.
In this Session, we have seen a large amount of legislation to improve the criminal justice system, and I support that. However, my constituents want the existing laws to be enforced as well as they can be. Catching people is the most important thing. It is important to prevent crime, but we must make sure that we catch people who break the law. My constituents will welcome the extra police, but will hope that there are plans in the comprehensive spending review to employ still more.
We have had a debate about whether it is size or what one does with the police that counts. Of course, it is vital to have efficient police, but a bigger efficient police force has to be better than a smaller efficient police force.
One of the Government's core beliefs, which I share, is that we should combine fairness and enterprise. I believe that the Government have shown a commitment to both. Crime is particularly unfair. It is unfair on people who work hard to provide for themselves, their families and others. It is a tragedy when their hard-earned property or their money is stolen or when they suffer attack and personal injury.
It is the Government's policy, which I support, to be the champion of ordinary, hard-working people. To do that, we must protect them and protect their families, homes and property. That is why our policies on crime are so important. I believe that, now that we have got through the difficult first two years, the Government are showing a good lead, and I hope that they continue in that way.

Mr. James Clappison: I welcome the opportunity to take part in this debate. It is an especial pleasure to follow the outstanding speech by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard). I also agreed with the sentiments with which the hon. Member for Waveney (Mr. Blizzard) concluded, as well as with many of the earlier parts of his speech, when he spoke about the growing public perception of crime. As well as crime itself, the fear of


crime is growing. It is also a question of police numbers. Elderly people feel the most vulnerable and fear that the help may not be available to them should they fall victim to crime.
It was absolutely right to choose this as a subject for debate. In my constituency, it is a matter of growing importance. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe got the big picture absolutely right. We are getting used to the Government's great selectivity with statistics, but the striking thing about the history of crime in this country is its remorseless rise, decade after decade. It has certainly been on a steadily rising curve over my lifetime. The only point at which the trend was departed from was from 1992 onwards. That was the only sustained period in which crime fell. It rose during the rest of the Conservative period of office, but it fell significantly in the period from 1992, with many fewer victims.
It is worrying that that trend seems to have been reversed and crime seems to be resuming its upward trend. We must do whatever we can to reverse the trend and prevent people from falling victim to crime. That is another reason why it was right to choose this subject.
My constituency has been badly affected by crime over the past three years, for reasons that have a local character quite apart from the general matters that we have been discussing. When the big increase in crime in Hertsmere is discussed, it will not do for Ministers or Labour Members to tell my constituents that it has something to do with the previous Government. That excuse is wearing thin generally, and certainly in the case of Hertsmere.
Up to 1997, Hertsmere had been policed for a long time by the Metropolitan police, generally without complaint about their performance. Shortly after that, the decision was taken to transfer Hertsmere to the Hertfordshire police, with effect from 1 April 2000, as a result of the new arrangements for the governance of London. Hertsmere was subject to a lengthy period of transitional policing by the Metropolitan police, and it is the widespread perception—which I suspect is backed up by the figures, although they are hard to obtain because policing districts were changed—that there was a substantial reduction in police numbers. That was certainly the complaint of all three political parties in Hertsmere.
Especially in the past year, the result has been a disastrous policing performance, with total crime up 11 per cent., violent crime up 51 per cent.—from 557 to 840 incidents—and robbery up 58 per cent. Robbery was very rare in Hertsmere before. The clear-up rate collapsed, falling by 27 per cent. The local paper was right to run a banner headline calling that a huge rise in crime figures. It certainly was, and it has caused great distress and discontent among my constituents.
Hertsmere has now been taken over by Hertfordshire police, who have certainly shown a commitment that has been warmly welcomed. Everybody is now backing them and giving them their strongest possible support, and their attitude has been praised. We look for better things in the future.
My constituents are certainly entitled to feel some disquiet and despair when they set that against the big picture of what the Labour party promised about policing before the general election. We were promised a

crackdown on anti-social behaviour, but such behaviour has grown in Hertsmere. The Prime Minister and the Home Secretary were very strong on the subject.
The Home Secretary said that he would go to war against all anti-social elements, even down to the squeegee merchants. The Prime Minister said that he was in favour of zero tolerance policing. At a Labour party press conference, he said:
I am absolutely passionate about this… You go out and ask old people who face these types of problem and they will say zero tolerance is a good idea. If you refuse to tolerate the small crimes then you can create a different climate within local communities.
The first thing that was implemented in those places that have adopted zero tolerance policing—I am thinking in particular about New York, which had a real mayor in Mayor Giuliani, as opposed to the red mayor that we have been given in London—was the recruitment of thousands of extra police officers. In this country, the Government set up an apparatus under the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, including, among the many buzzwords, the anti-social behaviour orders and local curfew orders.
Those orders were at the core of the Act. It is no good Ministers playing them down and saying that there are examples of previous laws that have not been given much effect. They were the flagship measures in the Government's flagship Bill. The anti-social behaviour order was trailed countless times, with press releases, visits to inner-city estates and announcements by different Ministers and by the Prime Minister himself.
The Government were warned by some that the orders were impractical and broke new ground legally. It has been interesting to hear some of the complaints from Labour Members in this debate. The hon. Member for Manchester, Central (Mr. Lloyd) said that the anti-social behaviour order process was complicated. He can say that again. We understand that others have made the same complaint.
What is beyond peradventure, given that the anti-social behaviour orders have been in operation for more than a year, is that they have not lived up to the expectations built up for them by the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister. About 40 or 45 orders have been issued, and I understand that at last we have had one in Hertfordshire.
It is very interesting that Ministers' tone is beginning to change. It is going through a distinct evolutionary phase. When the failure of the courts to issue more of the orders was pointed out to Ministers, they said that it would take time for them to bed down. When it became clear that they were not bedding down at any perceptible rate, they said that the deterrent effect was the most important thing.
In olden days, public executions had a deterrent effect, but there have to be some in an area for there to be any effect at all, and large parts of the country have not seen a single anti-social behaviour order. Until recently, the nearest one to Hertfordshire had been in Camden.
We have moved on to a new phase, which right hon. and hon. Members will recognise, in the evolution of a struggling policy. The Government have stopped trying to pretend that the policy has been a success or that it has had some sort of remote effects that have been successful. Now the Government are looking for someone else to blame, but they cannot make up their mind who should be blamed. The Minister of State, Home Office said during Question Time on Monday that local authorities could be


criticised for their approach. The Home Secretary has aimed higher and chosen a different target. In an angry outburst at a recent conference, he made what was described by the Press Association as
a scathing attack on "well heeled" civil liberties lawyers.
In explaining why the number of anti-social behaviour orders was so low, he said:
I had in mind some of the lawyers and so called legal experts who have been running a campaign against Anti Social Behaviour Orders suggesting ludicrously that they go against the European Convention of Human Rights. I think there is a huge issue of hypocrisy here. They represent the perpetrator of crime and then get into their BMWs and drive off into areas where they are immune from much of the crime.
The Home Secretary should be more careful about attacking such people, because the ruffled feathers were probably to be found more among friends of Labour Members than anyone else. Ministers will have to decide who is to blame, but I expect that in the end—

The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. Charles Clarke): You are.

Mr. Clappison: The Minister has beaten me to it. I knew that it would end up being our fault.
I have a helpful suggestion about the anti-social behaviour orders. Some of the suggestions that I have made in the past have been adopted by other hon. Members. If the orders are to be used in targeting what the Government have described as sub-criminal behaviour, they will have to employ many more police officers. As the House will have gathered tonight, the police officers we have are already fully stretched dealing with criminal behaviour. It is not possible for the frontiers of crime fighting to be stretched to cover sub-criminal behaviour when the Government have such difficulty dealing with actual criminal behaviour.
In the debate on police numbers, we have heard much from the Government about initiatives, strategies, partnerships and fighting funds. If we had an extra police officer for every time we have heard one of those buzzwords, we would all be happier. What is the real picture on police numbers? The Home Secretary told us on Monday at Question Time about the Government's plans for police numbers. It is an accepted fact that in every year under this Government so far the number of police officers has fallen and, according to Labour Members, after three years of this Government, that fall is all the Conservatives' fault. The Home Secretary said:
The projections of police numbers based on forces' estimates for recruitment and wastage now rise as follows: it is projected that, in March 2001, the number will be 126,500 and that, in March 2002, it will be 127,000.—[Official Report, 22 May 2000; Vol. 350, c. 655.]
That will still leave police numbers lower than when the Government took office.
For some strange reason, the Home Secretary finished his prediction at March 2002. Can the Minister confirm that the Home Office police resources unit has a projection for March 2003 that police numbers will start to fall again, to 125,900? That unit gives the same projection for other years as the Home Secretary gave the House on Monday. If the Minister can confirm that point, it is worrying and my right hon. and hon. Friends are right to highlight the subject.
While there cannot be said to be a clear link between police numbers and the incidence of crime, the public expect visible policing. They also expect a speedy response from the police for the victims of crime. Visible policing is vital for the elderly, because it does so much for the quality of their lives when they see a bobby on the beat when they are out and about. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Eltham (Mr. Efford) represents a constituency covered by the Metropolitan police force, so he had better be very careful.

Mr. Efford: Would you care to comment on the £400 a month reduction in the salaries for police officers and its effect on recruitment to the Metropolitan police? Your Government did it.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Alan Haselhurst): Order. The hon. Gentleman must use the correct terms. It is nothing to do with me.

Mr. Clappison: The hon. Gentleman has had his answer. If that is the quality of the excuses from Labour Members, they should watch out. The local election results were only the beginning.

Mr. Phil Hope: Will the hon. Gentleman explain why he and his party voted against the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Bill, which will tackle organised crime and drug trafficking? The hon. Gentleman claims to support the fight against crime, but he voted this month to stop powers to tackle crime.

Mr. Clappison: I understand that my hon. Friends took the view that the powers in that Bill were not strong enough. If the hon. Gentleman looks at the history of the last Parliament, he will see that the previous Government introduced measure after measure to crack down on drug traffickers and drug trafficking, some of which broke new ground. I give Labour credit for not always opposing those measures, but they did oppose several measures that have proved helpful to the police, including the change in the law on the right to silence. The Home Secretary himself opposed that change, but it has assisted the police greatly in tackling crime.

Mr. Heald: Does my hon. Friend think that the hon. Member for Corby (Mr. Hope) might find it helpful to read the reasoned amendment on Third Reading? It makes it clear that the powers in the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Bill will be inadequate for the police's purposes.

Mr. Clappison: My hon. Friend is right. The issue of honesty in sentencing is also connected to prison numbers. I invite the Minister to reflect on the view expressed on both sides of the House about the mess that sentencing in the criminal justice system is in. Whatever view one takes of the efficacy of prison, honesty in sentencing—what the courts give an offender and the sentence he actually serves—is important. It cannot be honest for courts to sentence an offender to prison for six months and then, six weeks later, for him to be released. We have talked about how victims feel, but I cannot think of anything more disillusioning for a victim of crime—perhaps an elderly person—than to see the offender sent to prison for six months only for that person to be released six weeks later, so that the victim might bump into him in the


supermarket or the pub. It cannot be right to tell the public one thing and then for something completely different to happen.
The Home Secretary mentioned the economies to be made by ending the right to trial by jury. However, there is no trade-off to be made between good law and order and civil liberties. The Government demonstrate that because their law and order policies do not work, at the same time as our civil liberties are being reduced. As The Guardian said—and I happily quote it on this occasion—civil liberty is the poor relation of this Government. That applies especially to trial by jury. The Home Secretary, when he commended the abolition of the right to trial by jury this afternoon, forgot to remind the House of what he said when the same measure was proposed in 1997 by a review under the previous Government. The findings of the review were not adopted, but they were considered. He came out and said that that review's proposal for curtailing the right to trial by jury was wrong, short sighted and likely to prove ineffective. Nothing has changed since then, but the Home Secretary has now adopted that proposal.
There is no trade-off between civil liberties and law and order. Both are going downhill under this Government, whose ineffective authoritarianism does not protect members of the public. People want an effective system of law and order more than anything else. They also want their traditional civil liberties to be preserved and the justice system to be administered fairly.
Unless the Government get a grip on the problem and cease to be complacent, I predict that there will be more speeches from hon. Members about fear of crime in their constituencies, which was the burden of the contribution from the hon. Member for Waveney. Conservative Members are right to focus on a matter that is growing in public importance largely because the Government are guilty of dereliction of duty with regard to the police force.

Helen Jones: Like many hon. Members, I come to the debate only too aware of those of my constituents who have suffered from the effects of criminal behaviour. Some are victims of crime while others suffer from the effect of crime on their neighbourhoods; and I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Mr. Blizzard) that the fear of crime is almost as pernicious as crime itself. That fear has grown in our communities over the past few years, and must also be tackled.
All hon. Members will have seen examples of how the fear of crime stunts people's lives—the elderly ladies who are afraid to open their front doors; the people who are afraid to go out at night or to leave their homes empty for any length of time. That fear is not always related to the most common forms of crime, but it is real: it destroys and disfigures communities, and it stems from a feeling prevalent during the previous Government's period in office—that nothing could be done and that the thugs and criminals were getting the upper hand.

Mr. Hope: Does my hon. Friend agree that the Conservative party is deliberately trying to promote the fear of crime for political reasons? My hon. Friend has

come to the House to contribute to the debate on this Opposition day motion. Is it not surprising that only three or four Conservative Members have done the same?

Helen Jones: My hon. Friend is right to point that out.
More important, however, was the way in which the previous Conservative Government failed to tackle crime and the fear of crime. I believe that that was an offence against a civil society that the Tory Government committed time and time again. There are recidivists on the Tory Benches, and their collective amnesia reminds me of the rewriting of history that is the subject of the novel "Nineteen Eighty-Four".
We should not allow the Conservative party to rewrite history. If the Opposition are to be taken seriously when they talk about crime, they must answer some important questions, the first and most important of which is the one to which we keep returning: how is it that the party that poses as the defender of law and order allowed crime to double during its time in government?

Mr. Heald: Did not the hon. Lady hear my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) explain that crime fell during the previous Parliament for the first time since the second world war? The Labour Government have taken the country back to the bad old days of rising crime. Should not the hon. Lady think about that?

Helen Jones: I do not accept the hon. Gentleman's thesis. His Government have to be judged on their whole period in office, not just on the figures for a few years.
The previous Government failed in other ways. They said that prison works, but for it to do so, criminals must first be caught and taken to court. Under the previous Conservative Government, the number of offenders brought to book fell by one third, whereas the period between the arrest and sentence of young offenders rose to four and a half months. In contrast, the conviction rate under this Government has risen to the highest level for 20 years.
The Conservative party tells us that burglary is a destructive and damaging crime. It is, and its victims feel violated in their own homes. So how did it happen that, under the Conservative Government, the chances of being burgled rose from 32:1 to 13:1? Conservative Members have many questions to answer.
My constituents know about the fear of crime. They learned a great deal about it during the 18 years of Conservative Government. That Government talked a good fight, whereas, in contrast, this Government have acted to reduce crime. The figures for domestic burglary have fallen by 20 per cent. under this Government, and crime has fallen by 7 per cent. overall. I know that the Opposition do not want to hear those figures, but they show the real picture.

Jackie Ballard: Will the hon. Lady give way?

Helen Jones: I hope that the hon. Lady will forgive me, but I have given way several times and want to make progress so that other hon. Members can speak in the debate.
The figures that I have cited, and the Government's action to reduce crime, are not based on some remote theory but on the real experiences of our constituents.


Those decent men and women tell us what they want to happen in the criminal justice system. They want to live in safe, quiet communities. They do not want to be terrorised by young offenders who are out of control, or to have their lives rendered unbearable as a result of harassment by a few people.
That is why the Government have introduced anti-social behaviour orders. If any Conservative Members think that those orders are merely a gimmick, they should come and talk to the people who come to my constituency surgery. They will be told how vital the orders are.
We reformed the youth justice system because people had had enough of seeing young offenders walk away laughing at the system after repeated cautions. We have also introduced a final warning for young offenders—something that the previous Government failed to do in 18 years in power. We are well on course to halving the period between arrest and sentence for persistent young offenders—a pledge that I recall the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) said could not be delivered. This Government are delivering it.
Labour Members know that our constituents were sick and tired of seeing criminals go to court for the same offences time after time without being properly punished. That is why minimum mandatory sentences have been adopted. It is hard to believe that some Opposition Members have called for the abolition of mandatory sentences for murder, the most severe crime of all. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will make it clear in his response to the debate that the Government value human life far more than that.
Many hon. Members will agree with what my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Central (Mr. Lloyd) said earlier—that crime in many areas of the country is largely drug related. My hon. Friend was right to say that greater powers are needed to protect witnesses in those circumstances. Almost every week I meet people who know who the drug dealers on their estates are but who are afraid to come forward with that information. In their position, I, too, would be afraid. We must do much more to protect those people when they give evidence. The police need to be given much more in the way of resources for surveillance of people who deal in drugs so that they can use that evidence in court.
We have taken steps to tackle the menace of drug-related crime. That is why we are introducing the power to test certain people for drugs on charge, and why we introduced drug-testing and treatment orders—measures which were opposed by the right hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Miss Widdecombe). That is why we are putting £20 million into arrest referral schemes.
We have to act to get people off drugs if we are to tackle the menace of drug-related crime at one end of the spectrum while ensuring that those who profit from that evil trade are not allowed to keep the profits that they make from dealing in human misery. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will talk about how those powers might be strengthened.
In the light of that, I hope that Conservative Members will reconsider their opposition to the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Bill. They opposed a Bill that gives

police more power to tackle organised crime such as drug dealing and money laundering. That sits very ill with some of the statements that we have heard from the Conservative Benches.

Mr. Heald: The hon. Lady should not perpetuate a myth. The reasoned amendment that the Opposition tabled on Second Reading of that Bill said that the powers in it were inadequate, and called for tougher measures.

Helen Jones: It is interesting that the hon. Gentleman's remarks are at variance with the response of the police. The police said that they needed the powers in the Bill, yet the hon. Gentleman voted against it.

Mr. Heald: Will the hon. Lady give way?

Helen Jones: If the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I should like to make some progress. [Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman will be able to speak at the end of the debate, as our silent Whip says.
Reducing crime is also about encouraging partnerships. The Opposition make light of that, but it is one of the most effective ways of tackling crime in our communities and keeping people safe. That is why we are investing £250 million in crime reduction programmes and why we have put £170 million worth of investment into closed circuit television cameras.
The crime and disorder reduction partnerships around the country are beginning to tackle crime. More important, they are changing attitudes. I should like to give an example of how that has operated in my constituency. We had a problem in an area called Birchwood, caused by a small number of young people. Everyone knew who they were. We have brought together to tackle that not just the police and the youth offending teams but local councils and the housing association for the area. As well as tackling those particular offenders, we have been looking at how to make the whole area safer so that people are less likely to have the opportunity to commit crimes.

Ms Rosie Winterton: Does my hon. Friend agree that the attitude of the Conservative party in dismissing local partnerships as useless and ineffective sends completely the wrong message to people and agencies working together to carry out the improvements that she eloquently describes.

Helen Jones: I could not agree more. I would go further: the Conservative attitude sends the wrong message to people whom the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe, the former Home Secretary, quite rightly praised earlier for standing up to criminals in their community. These people must be supported, and we are putting into place the measures and the partnerships to support them. The fact that the Opposition reject that says much about their real agenda. It is about whipping up fears in the community. It is more about headline-grabbing than about tackling crime.
The Conservatives hope that we have forgotten their past record. Were she here, the right hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald would tell them that when it comes to obtaining forgiveness for their past record, absolution requires a firm purpose of amendment. They


have no purpose of amendment at the moment. They remain recidivists on crime, and for that reason, I urge the House to reject the motion.

Mr. Peter Bottomley: The hon. Member for Warrington, North (Helen Jones) may be a pleasant person, but that was a pretty nasty speech. It was unnecessarily and inaccurately partisan, and I hope that if she re-reads it tomorrow—she may be the only person who does—she will spot the occasions when she should have followed the examples of the hon. Members for Manchester, Central (Mr. Lloyd) and for Waveney (Mr. Blizzard) in reflecting the real concerns of constituents. Those hon. Members were able to say that; I am able to say that; and most right hon. and hon. Members will say that. We should have a partnership not just with local organisations but across the House to achieve what our constituents want, whether they are represented by a Labour, Conservative or Liberal Democrat Member of Parliament, or anyone else.
Our constituents want to have a sense of security; they want to believe that three essential things are happening. They want to know that fewer people commit serious crimes; that those who do so commit them over a shorter period; and that a growing number of people find something worthwhile to do in the campaign on behalf of the victims of crime. Those are the three crucial elements.
If anyone wants confirmation of that, I suggest that they watch "Crimewatch UK Update" this evening. My constituent Michael Abatan is related to a victim of crime who died; he was a victim in the same event, in which he was injured, and he is a witness. There are many people like him, like his partner Kathy, and like the partner of his brother Jay Abatan who died, who want people to help in solving crimes. They would be the first to say that we should try, with the police and everybody else, to cut down on the amount of crime committed.
Let me give an indication of how serious the problem is. Every week, 2,400 people in this country are, for the first time, convicted of a serious criminal offence, for which they could be sent to jail for six months or more. Fortunately, they are not sent to jail in large numbers. I shall also give a comparison because I am often reminded by my doctor daughter that politicians talk, but do not always give evidence or figures on the basis of which their remarks can be judged. In the United States, whose population is five times this country's, there are 2 million people in jail. The equivalent for this country, on the basis of population, would be 400,000 people in jail. We actually have getting on for 70,000 people in jail. Our crime rate does not match that in the United States. So although prison has a purpose and may be necessary, it is false to say that it is the way to reduce the number of victims of crime, the number who become criminals for the first time or the amount of time for which people remain criminals.
I shall claim to be the voice of the liberal establishment, as no one else has. I do not mean the soft liberal establishment—although one has some ideas which, if tested, may be shown to work. Let me give an illustration. Some 1,800 people a year used to die as a result of people drinking above the legal limit and driving. That is two and a half times more than the number of murder victims a year in this country. In terms of gaps in families, the

criminal activity of drink-driving caused more misery and avoidable tragedy than all the murders that had been committed. That figure of 1,800 people a year killed by drink-driving is now down to about 500. Although the figure is still far too high, it is less than a third of what it was at its peak. There was no change in the criminal law during the period over which the figure diminished from 1,800, to 1,200, to 600, to what it is at present. There was no change in sentencing, enforcement or penalty. It happened because of a change of culture.
One lesson to be learned from that example is that a change of culture can make a difference. I believe that the crime rate was low between the wars not because of different levels of unemployment, or because there are now more radio-cassette players for people to steal, or because of drugs, but partly because during that period many more younger people took part in worthwhile activities. The growth of organisations such as the Woodcraft Folk, the Boys Brigade, the scouts and brownies involved many younger people as youth leaders. Many more, whether they lived in rich or poor areas, in social housing, privately rented or owner-occupied accommodation, were involved in two or three worthwhile activities a week, such as sport and drama.
I believe that if we did a study at juvenile courts and saw who was persistently in trouble with the law, it would tend to be people who did not know what they would be doing, on a regular basis, a week or even two weeks ahead. I am not arguing that many of us got through our teenage years without doing anything wrong, but the difference between most of those who are persistently in trouble and those who are not lies in the confidence and competence of parents to provide meaningful activities for their children.
I pay tribute to the Peabody Trust; this afternoon, I attended, as an observer, one of its community development meetings. In the housing for which the trust takes on responsibility, sometimes from local authorities, it tries to find easy ways to combat people's fear of crime—for example, by ensuring that there is a lock on the rubbish chute lockers, so that people do not go in there to inject heroin; and that people can go in and out of their own front door without being worried.
I congratulate the Government on their announcement that child prostitutes will be considered to be victims rather than criminals. When I was chairman of the Church of England Children's Society, we tried to work with partnerships in some of the most difficult areas. Children in care were often both victims of crime and those who subsequently became criminals. We failed those children of the state in so many ways. If we can offer some hope to the children for whom we have responsibility—either through local authorities or nationally—we shall also give the rest of our children a better chance.
It is not possible to go into detail about some of the most important matters. However, if we took a liberal establishment view, we should take account of the figures to which I referred—the 2,400 a week or the 30 per cent. of men who have been convicted by the age of 30. We should learn more about people's experiences in jail—especially those of younger people. When I visit prisons and listen to people aged under 25, it occurs to me that I might meet such people on the streets of any of our towns and they might say, "I don't want to beg, but I came out of prison this morning. Can you tell me where to find a bed tonight and a job interview tomorrow?" Until we can


give an answer to that question in every part of the country, people leaving jail will not have the chance that they deserve.
I do not believe in being soft. People who commit crimes should be caught—early. We could adopt further measures to reduce the consequences of what may have started as mild bad behaviour. I offer an example from Worthing. Recently, some people—I suspect they had been drinking in public—went to an alley behind some shops and lit a fire. The fire melted a gas pipe, causing a conflagration in which two shops were burnt out. In my view, there was also a failure to use proper materials for the gas supply in an exposed area—plastic pipe may be all right underground, but not in the open, where there may be rubbish. We need to learn lessons from that.
We should also learn lessons about visible policing. The Home Secretary can make a decent speech. I suspect that he and I might agree on some elements of his responsibilities. However, when his ears go red, I think that he is talking to the gallery rather than to those who share his concerns. At present, they are not red. Sometimes, when the right hon. Gentleman raises his voice, we can be fairly sure that he is trying to mislead his Back Benchers and, possibly, the Opposition. It does not always work.
Anything that the Home Office says about statistics on policing or about the last Government should be checked by the director of the Office for National Statistics—as, indeed, should any similar statements from the Department of Health and the Prime Minister. The Government should say whether they mean that the figures apply from 1979 or from 1992—the Home Secretary is rising to adopt my suggestion.

Mr. Straw: We do check. I am absolutely committed to integrity in statistics. Before the implementation of the National Statistics Commission across government, I called in the Royal Statistical Society to ensure that our statistics—provided for Ministers—were of the highest integrity and independence. That is in stark contrast to the record of the previous Administration.

Mr. Bottomley: The Home Secretary should check that with the Office for National Statistics. I held ministerial office for six years during the previous Administration. Although my experience was not at the right hon. Gentleman's exalted level, it was twice as long, so I have twice as much experience of dealing with Government statistical services. Furthermore, I can give him a statistic that he has probably not calculated. During the first five minutes of his speech, the number of Back Benchers who were not in the doughnut around him fell from 11 to nine—a reduction of 18 per cent. in the number of Back Benchers who were listening to him. I merely say that to illustrate the fact that he was not talking to a large audience.
In relation to the serious points that the right hon. Gentleman made, when he talks about the last Government, will he make it plain whether he means the 1992–97 Administration or the years from 1979 to 1997. The last Government is an ambiguous expression, which will no longer suffice. I should be grateful if he could confirm what he means.
I pointed out that there were between 65,000 and 70,000 people in prison. Last year, 18,000 of them were found to have used illegal drugs. I shall not go into detail about the Cambridge Two and the slogan "Help the Homeless—Jail the Social Workers". However, if on only one of the 30 occasions when people in prison use illegal drugs—[Interruption]—I do not know why hon. Members are laughing. If 18,000 in 65,000 prisoners are using illegal drugs, and if the Prison Service—in closed institutions—can detect those drugs in only one in every 30 cases, we have a major problem. The figures are contained in Home Office statistics. No doubt, if I have got them wrong, the Home Secretary will point it out.
The figures have been going down. The problem involved about 24 per cent. of prisoners; the number is now between 17 and 19 per cent. However, if people can obtain illegal drugs in prison, they will continue their drugs habit when they are released. If prison is to help, it should be part of the cure or therapy for some of the underlying problems.
People who are on drugs commit crimes. Sometimes, people commit crimes to obtain drugs. We need to deal with both elements. I support the efforts of the Home Office and the Prison Service to reduce the amount of drugs in prisons.
My final point relates to my constituency. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere (Mr. Clappison) that elderly people especially need a sense of security. That will come when they can see that crime in their area is falling. That point was also made by the hon. Members for Manchester, Central and for Waveney. People will gain a sense of security when they see police officers around and about.
In Worthing, I should not mind if the police station was moved from the centre of town to Durrington. What is important is that the police are visible in villages such as Ferring, Rustington, Goring and East Preston and in central Worthing. People need to see the police and talk to them. People should not see the police only when a family member has been killed or injured in a car crash, or when someone is suspected, or is the victim, of a crime; the police should form an ordinary part of the community.

Mr. Hayes: The non-adversarial policing that my hon. Friend describes will never be achieved if our national statistics are crime led and the police service is funded accordingly. The police will always have to fund such policing on a discretionary basis and they do not have resources to do so.

Mr. Bottomley: I thank my hon. Friend for that point. If he does not have a chance to make a speech, I hope that the Home Office will respond to it.
In trying to achieve that sense of security, the police should consult with local authorities about whether there should be a further reduction in drinking in public. If there are to be increased opportunities for young people to drink in licensed premises, the corollary should be that the amount of drinking in the streets—by the young or by older people—should be controlled. I do not want to get rid of street cafes in tourist areas. However, in residential areas, where there are problems owing to people drinking in the streets, the police and local authorities would be right to reflect popular views that the arrangements should be reviewed. If necessary, there should be a clampdown and a ban.

Mr. Oliver Heald: We have held a good and well-informed debate, although there has been the occasional spiteful comment. However, certain themes have emerged from both sides of the House—even though their interpretation might not always have been the same.
My hon. Friend the Member for Worthing, West (Mr. Bottomley) made a thoughtful and serious speech. Although he described himself as a member of the liberal establishment, I am sure he meant liberal with a small "l". Many of us would agree with what he said about groups, such as the Peabody Trust, that examine thoughtfully the way in which problems of the architecture of the inner city can be dealt with. Obvious changes can be made and everyone in the House should pay those groups a tremendous tribute. My hon. Friend's comments about drink driving were relevant and both sides of the House can accept his point about the need for a change in the culture of society.
One of the themes that my hon. Friend highlighted has been a feature of the debate. A visible police presence is an incredibly important part of elderly people feeling safe in their communities. That point was made by everyone who has spoken.
The hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes) talked about the need to consider the victims and, in an excellent speech, the hon. Member for Manchester, Central (Mr. Lloyd) said that the fear of crime was the top issue in his constituency. He spoke about a lady who stood out bravely against the drug dealers who were attacking her and he said, quite frankly, that there were not enough police in his area.
The hon. Member for Manchester, Central echoed a point made by Fred Broughton of the Police Federation, who said that the police receive much of the criticism for the way in which things have gone recently. He said:
Every policy station in the country is facing anger from its community.
The hon. Gentleman echoed that comment and it is true that, in his area, crime is up by 6.7 per cent.
My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) also paid tribute to the bravery of all the individuals he had met as Home Secretary and who put up a fight and stand up for decent values in difficult circumstances. He also put the record straight. He pointed out that, under his stewardship, crime fell by 18 per cent. He is convinced, as I am, that the reason for that was a firmness of approach. To send criminals to prison is not the crime; the crime is not to do that. He spoke about the relationship between the liberal establishment and the failure of successive Governments to deal with crime. He also pointed out that, during his time in office, funding for the police increased in real terms by 4.2 per cent. when, under this Government, it has fallen by 0.2 per cent.
The hon. Member for Waveney (Mr. Blizzard) said that crime is now rising in Suffolk and that it is the top issue in the county. He pointed out that, in rural areas, there was virtually no crime but that its incidence is now rising. He used the expression that the thin blue line is thin. The perception is that crime is rising.
My hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere (Mr. Clappison) described the plight of the elderly and the vulnerable, with police numbers falling and crime rising in his constituency. He called for a crackdown on anti-social behaviour and pointed out the weakness of antisocial behaviour orders and of the unused and unloved child curfew order.
It was a feature of the debate that everyone who has taken part is concerned about ASBOs. In a debate a few months ago, the hon. Member for Gedling (Mr. Coaker) explained that only one child curfew order has been made in Nottingham and that was against someone who
had been convicted 55 times in the past two years on charges including theft, taking vehicles, robbery, burglary, handling stolen goods and motoring offences.—[Official Report, Westminster Hall, 1 February 2000; Vol. 343, c. 139WH.]
He explained the bureaucratic and complex regulations or requirements of an ASBO and all the case conferences and consultation that must be undertaken. He said that it should be a quick and efficient process, but that it was not. The Government will clearly have to think again about a flagship policy that has failed.
In measuring the Government's performance against their promises, the starting point should be the Labour party's manifesto. It said:
The police have our strong support
and that the Labour party would
get more officers back on the beat.
The police believed that "strong support" meant more than just words and that "more officers" meant more officers. In fact, funding is lower in real terms and the number of constables, which increased under the previous Government by 2,500, is now sharply falling. The Audit Commission has criticised the reversal of that trend. Like some Members who have spoken in the debate, it has pointed out:
Officers on patrol, especially on foot, provide a sense of security, of help being close at hand.
I make the central charge that the Government, unlike the Labour Back Benchers who have spoken in the debate, are simply out of touch with the public's concerns on law and order. I come to the Dispatch Box from time to time to reply to statements that the Minister of State, Home Office, the hon. Member for Norwich, South (Mr. Clarke), makes and last week we heard about the plan for extensive new training for the police. However, where will the officers come from to be trained? Can they be spared? The Police Federation vice-chairman says:
Our men on the ground are saying that it is getting to the stage that they feel vulnerable and overworked. They do not feel that they can give the public anything like the service they would like and it is in danger of leaving a vacuum on our streets.

Ms Julia Drown: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Heald: Unfortunately, I do not have time to give way.
Last week, the Minister told us about a new complaints procedure. However, 90 police stations have closed in the past year, so where does one go to make a complaint? He has spoken of improving police equipment and technology but, in April, on average almost a quarter of the Metropolitan police's vehicles were off the road every day


for repairs. He has announced new communications for the police, but 999 calls are now being answered by a recorded message machine.
The Minister talks about cutting bureaucracy for the police yet the White Paper on licensing will give them a new role as the licensing authority for church fetes and other temporary events. While he tells us that he is considering rural sparsity funding, the National Farmers Union estimates that the cost of rural crime to farmers has risen by £100 million per annum.
What do the public think when they see a headline that says, "Yard operators are 'losing it' in a 999 crisis"? A recent article says that Scotland Yard, which used be the gold standard of policing in Britain,
is in danger of being overwhelmed with emergency calls amid a staffing crisis and a surge in the number of people dialling 999.
Senior officers are drawing up continency plans and they say that
they are coping with a surge in calls.
No wonder—crime is rising at 3 per cent. The surge in calls should be no surprise. If crime is rising, it is obvious that more people will ring in.
When an operator was asked about the problem, he said:
On one recent shift 20 to 30 calls were being held in a queue.
He explained:
The problem is caused partly by…a rise in the number of calls.
How can a member of the public—[Interruption.] The Home Secretary says from a sedentary position, "How professional", but the public have a right to know whether their 999 calls will be answered. The public have a right to see police on the beat and to have their numbers restored, so that there is visible presence and the public need not be frightened. The public have a right to hear from the Home Secretary how he will tackle the rise in crime, and I hope that he is about to do just that.

Mr. Straw: I did not say what the hon. Gentleman suggests.

Mr. Heald: Goodness knows what the right hon. Gentleman said. Perhaps I did not hear him correctly. I thought that he said, "That was very professional". The operator was explaining the shortcomings of the Home Office and the difficulties that he faces in trying to answer people's calls at the most desperate moments when people are frightened and afraid. I thought that it was at those comments that the Home Secretary was sneering.
People are entitled to feel safe in their communities. The Conservative party is committed to providing answers, particularly to the central question of police numbers. The public want to know when the Government will respond positively. The public want the answer that the Government will restore police numbers to the level that they inherited and that they will be tough on crime and the causes of crime. In other words, the public want the Government to live up to their promises; they do not want the current position, which is all talk, all sweet words and no delivery.

The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. Charles Clarke): Our debate has been quite thoughtful—at least Back Benchers' contributions were. I welcome our discussions, as it is important to have a political debate about the issues, and I am glad that the Opposition decided to table the motion. However, I regret the fact that only three Conservative Back Benchers were present for most of the debate, and think that that is significant.
I intend to try to set out the strategy that the Government are seeking to follow. We inherited problems after 18 years of Conservative Government. I shall not get into trite questions about whether crime doubled or, indeed, go through that whole debate. However, I shall indicate the problem that we are trying to address in each policy area and how we are doing that.
I do not think that the problems that we inherited were those of a great liberal establishment. Indeed, Margaret Thatcher, who was Prime Minister for a considerable part of that period, would not have been very pleased to be described as part of such an establishment. For much of her life, she represented Finchley—a Hampstead liberal if ever there was one. Authoritarian ineffectiveness, to reverse the words of the hon. Member for Hertsmere (Mr. Clappison), was characteristic of that whole period of government.
Our strategy has been to build our way out of the crisis that we inherited. We believe that it is important to address anti-social behaviour, and we all know of such problems in our constituencies. As an aside, let me say that the young people causing such problems are the children of the no-such-thing-as-society generation. We did not have the necessary legal instruments, which had not been provided by the previous Government, so we set about establishing them. Of course, we have to do a great deal more, and do it better, so criticism on that is perfectly justified. However, we got the legal instruments in place as we needed to do, and we are addressing the problem.
Partnership is another element of our strategy. There was no legal basis to the partnerships when we came to power. Everyone acknowledges that the most important legislation on changing the culture of policing and other issues has been introduced by us. We have set about achieving a legal basis for the partnerships and have changed Metropolitan police boundaries to get them going. We have also put resources into closed circuit television, neighbourhood wardens and so on to make those partnerships work. We have set about that process, although I accept that we have not done enough. However, we are going to do more.
The hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire (Mr. Heald) made some rather jeering remarks about technology. We have inherited a situation in which 43 police authorities each use different technologies and so cannot communicate with one another. Police, prisons, the probation service, the crown courts, the magistrates courts and the Crown Prosecution Service all have entirely different systems and cannot relate to one another effectively. We are investing to solve that important problem, which should have been addressed a hell of a long time ago.
We are putting money into DNA testing and are improving the police national computer. Those are significant matters, as it is important to use technology to benefit policing. Modernisation of the police is important,


as is training, as most people would acknowledge. The Police Federation certainly did when the hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire and I attended its conference. It is important to establish a best value regime that addresses significantly different levels of performance by different basic command units and different police authorities throughout the country.
We have worked on establishing an independent complaints procedure and dealing with the relationship with the community and related issues following the Macpherson report. Major issues have to be addressed, but so do ridiculous issues. Different police forces have different height requirements for special constables. People with glasses can be recruited in some forces, but not others. That is a ludicrous state of affairs which we must modernise and get straight. We have had to deal with all the mess that was left behind.
Serious and organised crime is another important matter which we tackled by getting real joint working between the National Criminal Intelligence Service, the security services, Customs and Excise, and the immigration and nationality directorate. That had not been done before, and we have got a strategy to get those key agencies working together. Of course, there is a great deal more to be achieved but, again, we are moving in the right direction.

Mr. Heald: rose—

Mr. Clarke: I shall not give way, because of the time constraint that the hon. Gentleman himself mentioned.
Drugs involved the same problems. We had to get the agencies working together properly and we introduced new legal instruments to try and address the issues involved. As everyone acknowledges, drugs are the core of a great deal of crime, and we have tried to make our strategy on them move forward.
I agreed with much of what the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes) said about support for victims and witnesses, and I can assure him that we will consider those points. We need more such support. The right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) was right to pay tribute to the courage of witnesses, and he will acknowledge that it is the duty of the state to give them all possible support. That is why we are making available more money and resources and providing better support for Victim Support. We have a lot further to go, but we are building on the inadequate provision that we inherited.
We are tackling reoffending by dealing with the situation of those who have been convicted, whether they require help with drug problems or education in literacy and numeracy. We are setting up a coherent programme to try to prevent people from reoffending. That is difficult and involves tackling cultural questions and significant problems.
Several hon. Members mentioned bobbies on the beat. We have made clear our intention, by the end of the Parliament, to increase police numbers to the level that we inherited.

Mr. Clappison: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Clarke: No.
In many places, the issue of bobbies on the beat is not simply a question of police numbers; it is a question of using technology effectively, reducing obstructions in the

criminal justice system and developing partnerships. Of course, as my hon. Friends have said, people want a high-profile local police force. We are committed to that, and I acknowledge that a great deal needs to be done, but we are setting about that task and aim to increase police numbers, as my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has said.
We have made progress in those strategic areas, and what we are doing is right. Of course there is more to be done, and I accept the fair criticism from my hon. Friends and the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey that we are not moving fast enough. However, I do not accept criticism about our strategies and methods or claims that what we are doing is nonsense and that we are going in the wrong direction. We aim to build a resilient law enforcement and criminal justice system. Without going into any of the arguments about money and police numbers, I can say that we did not inherit such a system and we needed to improve it.
I turn now to what the Opposition have been saying. The right hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Miss Widdecombe) has not at any time acknowledged her errors or her responsibility for the situation that we inherited. The Opposition have no strategy of any kind, but have merely staged populist public relations stunts. Their programmes are uncosted, and would require more than the £260 million that the right hon. Lady suggested. The cost of the measures that she described would be getting on for £2 billion. That is on top of the £3.5 billion that the Conservatives are committed to spending on asylum, making almost £6 billion altogether.
Let us consider what has happened in Parliament when measures have been considered. On illegal immigration, the Conservatives listened to the road hauliers rather than taking account of the interests of law enforcement. On the Criminal Justice (Mode of Trial) Bill, they listened to lawyers rather than the police or anybody else. If the Opposition had won a vote on the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Bill, all agencies would have had to suspend their investigations into paedophilia, drug trafficking and money laundering on 2 October. The hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire failed to say that the reason for that vote was that he had listened too much to the businesses involved and had not taken enough account of the interests of law enforcement.

Mr. Heald: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Clarke: No.
Last week, in proceedings on a private Bill promoted by Kent county council—there is an identical Bill promoted by Medway council—we even heard the hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Mr. Hawkins) saying that he was not interested in the measure suggested by the chief constable of Kent and my hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham (Mr. Clark) because he was worried about antique dealers, despite the fact that they want to identify fences. The right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth) has prevented the progress of legislation on international banning orders for football supporters committing offences and on stopping under-age drinking.
Throughout this Parliament, the Conservatives have shown that they aim not to help law enforcement, but to oppose it. That is why the Leader of the Opposition,


realising that his party has no strategy, has decided to take over from the right hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald and has overruled various of her decisions. He is wearing the clothes of racist populism and turning himself into skinhead Hague. He believes that he is playing a populist card. I urge the House to reject the motion and to back the Government's strategy to build a country in which we can be proud and safe.

Question put, That the original words stand part of the Question:—

The House divided: Ayes 138, Noes 358.

Division No. 206]
[6.59 pm


AYES


Ainsworth, Peter (E Surrey)
Heald, Oliver


Amess, David
Heath, Rt Hon Sir Edward


Ancram, Rt Hon Michael
Heathcoat-Amory, Rt Hon David


Arbuthnot, Rt Hon James
Hogg, Rt Hon Douglas


Atkinson, David (Bour'mth E)
Horam, John


Atkinson, Peter (Hexham)
Howard, Rt Hon Michael


Baldry, Tony
Hunter, Andrew


Beggs, Roy
Jackson, Robert (Wantage)


Bercow, John
Jenkin, Bernard


Blunt, Crispin
Johnson Smith, Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey


Boswell, Tim



Bottomley, Peter (Worthing W)
Key, Robert


Bottomley, Rt Hon Mrs Virginia
King, Rt Hon Tom (Bridgwater)


Brady, Graham
Kirkbride, Miss Julie


Brazier, Julian
Lait, Mrs Jacqui


Brooke, Rt Hon Peter
Lansley, Andrew


Browning, Mrs Angela
Leigh, Edward


Burns, Simon
Letwin, Oliver


Butterfill, John
Lewis, Dr Julian (New Forest E)


Cash, William
Lidington, David


Chapman, Sir Sydney (Chipping Barnet)
Lilley, Rt Hon Peter



LIoyd, Rt Hon Sir Peter (Fareham)


Clappison, James
Loughton, Tim


Clark, Dr Michael (Rayleigh)
Lyell, Rt Hon Sir Nicholas


Clarke, Rt Hon Kenneth (Rushcliffe)
MacGregor, Rt Hon John



McIntosh, Miss Anne


Clifton-Brown, Geoffrey
MacKay, Rt Hon Andrew


Collins, Tim
Maclean, Rt Hon David


Cormack, Sir Patrick
McLoughlin, Patrick


Cran, James
Madel, Sir David


Davis, Rt Hon David (Haltemprice)
Maples, John


Day, Stephen
Mates, Michael


Duncan Smith, Iain
Maude, Rt Hon Francis


Emery, Rt Hon Sir Peter
Mawhinney, Rt Hon Sir Brian


Evans, Nigel
May, Mrs Theresa


Faber, David
Moss, Malcolm


Fallon, Michael
Nicholls, Patrick


Forth, Rt Hon Eric
Norman, Archie


Fowler, Rt Hon Sir Norman
O'Brien, Stephen (Eddisbury)


Fox, Dr Liam
Ottaway, Richard


Fraser, Christopher
Paice, James


Gale, Roger
Pickles, Eric


Garnier, Edward
Portillo, Rt Hon Michael


Gibb, Nick
Prior, David


Gill, Christopher
Randall, John


Gorman, Mrs Teresa
Redwood, Rt Hon John


Gray, James
Robathan, Andrew


Green, Damian
Robertson, Laurence


Greenway, John
Robinson, Peter (Belfast E)


Grieve, Dominic
Roe, Mrs Marion (Broxbourne)


Gummer, Rt Hon John
Ruffley, David


Hague, Rt Hon William
St Aubyn, Nick


Hamilton, Rt Hon Sir Archie
Shephard, Rt Hon Mrs Gillian


Hammond, Philip
Shepherd, Richard


Hawkins, Nick
Simpson, Keith (Mid-Norfolk)


Hayes, John
Smyth, Rev Martin (Belfast S)





Soames, Nicholas
Walter, Robert


Spicer, Sir Michael
Waterson, Nigel


Spring, Richard
Wells, Bowen


Stanley, Rt Hon Sir John
Whitney, Sir Raymond


Steen, Anthony
Whittingdale, John


Streeter, Gary
Widdecombe, Rt Hon Miss Ann


Swayne, Desmond
Wilkinson, John


Syms, Robert
Willetts, David


Tapsell, Sir Peter
Wilshire, David


Taylor, John M (Solihull)
Winterton, Mrs Ann (Congleton)


Taylor, Sir Teddy
Winterton, Nicholas (Macclesfield)


Thompson, William
Yeo, Tim


Tredinnick, David
Young, Rt Hon Sir George


Trend, Michael



Tyrie, Andrew
Tellers for the Ayes:


Viggers, Peter
Mrs. Eleanor Laing and



Mr. Peter Luff


NOES


Ainger, Nick



Ainsworth, Robert (Cov'try NE)
Campbell, Ronnie (Blyth V)


Alexander, Douglas
Campbell-Savours, Dale


Allan, Richard
Cann, Jamie


Allen, Graham
Caplin, Ivor


Anderson, Donald (Swansea E)
Casale, Roger


Anderson, Janet (Rossendale)
Caton, Martin


Armstrong, Rt Hon Ms Hilary
Chapman, Ben (Wirral S)


Ashdown, Rt Hon Paddy
Chaytor, David


Ashton, Joe
Clapham, Michael


Atkins, Charlotte
Clark, Rt Hon Dr David (S Shields)


Austin, John
Clarke, Charles (Norwich S)


Baker, Norman
Clarke, Eric (Midlothian)


Ballard, Jackie
Clarke, Tony (Northampton S)


Barnes, Harry
Clelland, David


Barron, Kevin
Clwyd, Ann


Bayley, Hugh
Coffey, Ms Ann


Beard, Nigel
Cohen, Harry


Beckett, Rt Hon Mrs Margaret
Coleman, Iain


Begg, Miss Anne
Colman, Tony


Beith, Rt Hon A J
Connarty, Michael


Bell, Martin (Tatton)
Cook, Frank (Stockton N)


Bell, Stuart (Middlesbrough)
Cooper, Yvette


Benn, Hilary (Leeds C)
Corston, Jean


Benn, Rt Hon Tony (Chesterfield)
Cotter, Brian


Bennett, Andrew F
Cox, Tom


Benton, Joe
Cranston, Ross


Bermingham, Gerald
Crausby, David


Berry, Roger
Cryer, Mrs Ann (Keighley)


Best, Harold
Cryer, John (Hornchurch)


Betts, Clive
Cunningham, Rt Hon Dr Jack (Copeland)


Blackman, Liz



Blears, Ms Hazel
Curtis-Thomas, Mrs Claire


Blizzard, Bob
Darvill, Keith


Blunkett, Rt Hon David
Davey, Edward (Kingston)


Boateng, Rt Hon Paul
Davey, Valerie (Bristol W)


Bradley, Keith (Withington)
Davidson, Ian


Bradley, Peter (The Wrekin)
Davies, Rt Hon Denzil (Llanelli)


Bradshaw, Ben
Davies, Geraint (Croydon C)


Brake, Tom
Denham, John


Brand, Dr Peter
Dismore, Andrew


Breed, Colin
Dobbin, Jim


Brinton, Mrs Helen
Dobson, Rt Hon Frank


Brown, Rt Hon Nick (Newcastle E)
Donohoe, Brian H


Brown, Russell (Dumfries)
Doran, Frank


Browne, Desmond
Dowd, Jim


Bruce, Malcolm (Gordon)
Drown, Ms Julia


Buck, Ms Karen
Dunwoody, Mrs Gwyneth


Burden, Richard
Eagle, Angela (Wallasey)


Burgon, Colin
Eagle, Maria (L'pool Garston)


Burnett, John
Edwards, Huw


Burstow, Paul
Efford, Clive


Butler, Mrs Christine
Ellman, Mrs Louise


Byers, Rt Hon Stephen
Ennis, Jeff


Cable, Dr Vincent
Etherington, Bill


Campbell, Mrs Anne (C'bridge)
Fearn, Ronnie


Campbell, Rt Hon Menzies (NE Fife)
Field, Rt Hon Frank






Fisher, Mark
Kidney, David


Fitzpatrick, Jim
Kilfoyle, Peter


Fitzsimons, Mrs Lorna
King, Andy (Rugby & Kenilworth)


Flint, Caroline
King, Ms Oona (Bethnal Green)


Flynn, Paul
Kirkwood, Archy


Foster, Rt Hon Derek
Kumar, Dr Ashok


Foster, Michael Jabez (Hastings)
Lawrence, Mrs Jackie


Foster, Michael J (Worcester)
Laxton, Bob


Fyfe, Maria
Lepper, David


Gapes, Mike
Levitt, Tom


Gardiner, Barry
Lewis, Ivan (Bury S)


George, Bruce (Walsall S)
Lloyd, Tony (Manchester C)


Gerrard, Neil
Llwyd, Elfyn


Gibson, Dr Ian
Lock, David


Gidley, Sandra
McAvoy, Thomas


Gilroy, Mrs Linda
McCabe, Steve


Godman, Dr Norman A
McCafferty, Ms Chris


Godsiff, Roger
McCartney, Rt Hon Ian (Makerfield)


Goggins, Paul



Gordon, Mrs Eileen
McDonagh, Siobhain


Griffiths, Jane (Reading E)
Macdonald, Calum


Griffiths, Nigel (Edinburgh S)
McDonnell, John


Griffiths, Win (Bridgend)
McFall, John


Grocott, Bruce
McGuire, Mrs Anne


Grogan, John
McIsaac, Shona


Gunnell, John
Mackinlay, Andrew


Hain, Peter
McNamara, Kevin


Hall, Patrick (Bedford)
McNulty, Tony


Hamilton, Fabian (Leeds NE)
MacShane, Denis


Hancock, Mike
McWalter, Tony


Hanson, David
Mahon, Mrs Alice


Harris, Dr Evan
Mandelson, Rt Hon Peter


Harvey, Nick
Marsden, Gordon (Blackpool S)


Heal, Mrs Sylvia
Marshall, David (Shettleston)


Healey, John
Marshall, Jim (Leicester S)


Heath, David (Somerton & Frome)
Marshall-Andrews, Robert


Henderson, Doug (Newcastle N)
Martlew, Eric


Henderson, Ivan (Harwich)
Maxton, John


Hepburn, Stephen
Meacher, Rt Hon Michael


Heppell, John
Meale, Alan


Hesford, Stephen
Merron, Gillian


Hill, Keith
Michael, Rt Hon Alun


Hinchliffe, David
Michie, Bill (Shef'ld Heeley)


Hoey, Kate
Michie, Mrs Ray (Argyll & Bute)


Hood, Jimmy
Mitchell, Austin


Hoon, Rt Hon Geoffrey
Moffatt, Laura


Hope, Phil
Moonie, Dr Lewis


Hopkins, Kelvin
Morgan, Ms Julie (Cardiff N)


Howarth, Alan (Newport E)
Morris, Rt Hon Ms Estelle (B'ham Yardley)


Hoyle, Lindsay



Hughes, Ms Beverley (Stretford)
Morris, Rt Hon Sir John (Aberavon)


Hughes, Kevin (Doncaster N)



Hughes, Simon (Southwark N)
Mountford, Kali


Humble, Mrs Joan
Mullin, Chris


Hutton, John
Murphy, Denis (Wansbeck)


Iddon, Dr Brian
Murphy, Jim (Eastwood)


Illsley, Eric
Murphy, Rt Hon Paul (Torfaen)


Jackson, Helen (Hillsborough)
Naysmith, Dr Doug


Jenkins, Brian
Norris, Dan


Johnson, Alan (Hull W & Hessle)
Oaten, Mark


Johnson, Miss Melanie (Welwyn Hatfield)
O'Brien, Bill (Normanton)



O'Brien, Mike (N Warks)


Jones, Rt Hon Barry (Alyn)
O'Hara, Eddie


Jones, Mrs Fiona (Newark)
Olner, Bill


Jones, Helen (Warrington N)
O'Neill, Martin


Jones, Ms Jenny (Wolverh'ton SW)
Öpik, Lembit



Organ, Mrs Diana


Jones, Jon Owen (Cardiff C)
Osborne, Ms Sandra


Jowell, Rt Hon Ms Tessa
Palmer, Dr Nick


Keen, Alan (Feltham & Heston)
Pearson, Ian


Keen, Ann (Brentford & Isleworth)
Pendry, Tom


Keetch, Paul
Perham, Ms Linda


Kelly, Ms Ruth
Pickthall, Colin


Kennedy, Rt Hon Charles (Ross Skye & Inverness W)
Pike, Peter L



Plaskitt, James


Khabra, Piara S
Pollard, Kerry





Pond, Chris
Steinberg, Gerry


Pope, Greg
Stevenson, George


Pound, Stephen
Stewart, Ian (Eccles)


Prentice, Ms Bridget (Lewisham E)
Stinchcombe, Paul


Prentice, Gordon (Pendle)
Stoate, Dr Howard


Prescott, Rt Hon John
Straw, Rt Hon Jack


Primarolo, Dawn
Stringer, Graham


Prosser, Gwyn
Stuart, Ms Gisela


Quin, Rt Hon Ms Joyce
Stunell, Andrew


Quinn, Lawrie
Sutcliffe, Gerry


Radice, Rt Hon Giles
Taylor, Rt Hon Mrs Ann (Dewsbury)


Rammell, Bill



Rapson, Syd
Taylor, Matthew (Truro)


Raynsford, Nick
Temple-Morris, Peter


Reed, Andrew (Loughborough)
Thomas, Gareth (Clwyd W)


Reid, Rt Hon Dr John (Hamilton N)
Thomas, Gareth R (Harrow W)


Rendel, David
Thomas, Simon (Ceredigion)


Roche, Mrs Barbara
Timms, Stephen


Rooker, Rt Hon Jeff
Tipping, Paddy


Rooney, Terry
Tonge, Dr Jenny


Ross, Ernie (Dundee W)
Touhig, Don


Rowlands, Ted
Truswell, Paul


Roy, Frank
Turner, Dennis (Wolverh'ton SE)


Ruane, Chris
Turner, Dr Desmond (Kemptown)


Ruddock, Joan
Turner, Neil (Wigan)


Russell, Bob (Colchester)
Twigg, Derek (Halton)


Russell, Ms Christine (Chester)
Tyler, Paul


Salter, Martin
Tynan, Bill


Sanders, Adrian
Vis, Dr Rudi


Sarwar, Mohammad
Walley, Ms Joan


Savidge, Malcolm
Ward, Ms Claire


Sedgemore, Brain
Wareing, Robert N


Shaw, Jonathan
Watts, David


Sheerman, Barry
Webb, Steve


Sheldon, Rt Hon Robert
Whitehead, Dr Alan


Shipley, Ms Debra
Wicks, Malcolm


Short, Rt Hon Clare
Williams, Rt Hon Alan (Swansea W)


Simpson, Alan (Nottingham S)



Skinner, Dennis
Williams, Alan W (E Carmarthen)


Smith, Rt Hon Andrew (Oxford E)
Willis, Phil


Smith, Angela (Basildon)
Wills, Michael


Smith, Rt Hon Chris (Islington S)
Winnick, David


Smith, Miss Geraldine (Morecambe & Lunesdale)
Winterton, Ms Rosie (Doncaster C)



Wood, Mike


Smith, Jacqui (Redditch)
Woolas, Phil


Smith, Llew (Blaenau Gwent)
Worthington, Tony


Smith, Sir Robert (W Ab'd'ns)
Wray, James


Snape, Peter
Wright, Anthony D (Gt Yarmouth)


Soley, Clive
Wright, Dr Tony (Cannock)


Southworth, Ms Helen
Wyatt, Derek


Spellar, John



Squire, Ms Rachel
Tellers for the Noes:


Starkey, Dr Phyllis
Mr. Mike Hall and



Mr. David Jamieson.

Question accordingly negatived.

Question, That the proposed words be there added, put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 31 (Questions on amendments), and agreed to.

MR. DEPUTY SPEAKER forthwith declared the main Question, as amended, to be agreed to.

Resolved,
That this House welcomes the fact that recorded crime has fallen by 7 per cent. since March 1997, with domestic burglary down by 20 per cent. and vehicle crime down by 14 per cent.; applauds the Government's investment to boost police recruitment; supports the Government's strategy for tackling crime and the causes of crime through better prevention, improving the performance of crime and disorder partnerships, the police and the criminal justice system, more effective punishment of offenders and securing greater support and protection for victims and witnesses; backs the radical reforms of the youth justice system, including swifter punishment for persistent offenders; and notes that all this is in sharp contrast to the record of the previous administration when crime doubled and the number of offenders convicted fell by a third.

Transport

[Relevant documents: The Ninth Report from the Environment, Transport and Regional Affairs Committee, Session 1998–99, Integrated Transport White Paper, HC 32-I, and the Government's response thereto, HC 708 of Session 1998–99.]

Mr. Bernard Jenkin: I beg to move,
That this House notes that, while government spending on transport has fallen in comparison with the period before the 1997 General Election, taxation on the motorist has been raised to record levels, so that £1 in every £7 now spent by the Government is raised from the motorist; condemns the Government for presiding over ever-worsening congestion without any policies to deal with continuing road traffic growth; welcomes the increasing investment in transport industries that were privatised during the previous administration; laments the failure of the Government to build on these achievements and that total public and private investment levels in transport are still well below what is required by people, business and industry; and condemns ministers for failing to secure increased funding for anything except for the growing costs of running the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions which is the Government's largest and least effective Department of State.
I am afraid that the first question that I have to ask is where is the Secretary of State? [HON. MEMBERS: "Where is Archie?"] I am the man responsible for the transport policy of Her Majesty's official Opposition, but the Secretary of State is responsible for transport, the environment and the regions, and much he has made of them since being appointed to the job. We are debating his policy and his White Paper; standstill Britain is his achievement. He is responsible for three years of perpetual policy chaos. He assumed office with ludicrous anti-car policy objectives such as traffic reduction targets, centralisation and control, and the travelling public are paying the price in congestion—not only on the roads, but on all our transport networks—transport spending cuts, delayed investment and, of course, ever-higher taxation. He is more mouth and less delivery than any other member of the Government. With all due respect to the Minister for Housing and Planning, who will reply to the debate, the Secretary of State should do so.
The Conservatives transformed many of the transport industries with privatisation and deregulation, starting with National Freight, British Airways, the British Airports Authority, British Rail's hotels, Sealink, Associated British Ports, the National Bus Company and the Scottish Bus Group, and finishing with British Rail. We stripped away the Treasury controls that stifled investment and we exposed those companies to proper competition. There has been an explosion of investment and innovation in those industries because they now put the customer first, and even the Government admit that there has been a transformation in the rail industry.

Angela Smith: I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way so early in his speech, but does he agree with the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Mr. Norman), who said today, "At Asda, we give a refund in all circumstances. That is because we are customer-led."? Will he give the British public a refund for the privatisations?

Mr. Jenkin: I shall treat the hon. Lady's intervention with the contempt that it deserves. I certainly support the

comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Mr. Norman), who speaks for the customer. It is about time that Ministers started speaking for the customers on the railways instead of for the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions.
The Conservatives invested huge sums in many Conservative projects, such as £26 billion in our trunk roads and motorway system. It is now a largely completed network, thanks to the Conservatives. We substantially reduced the maintenance backlog to a manageable level. What would transport be like today if we had not built the M25, the M40, the second Severn crossing or the second Dartford crossing? The long list of such transport projects includes the docklands light railway, the Manchester metro, the Sheffield metro, the £12.5 billion investment in the channel tunnel and the docklands light railway extension.
During the past two or three years, there has been a succession of celebrated openings of great transport projects. The Prime Minister opened the Heathrow express in June 1998. That was a Conservative project and our achievement, as was the Jubilee line extension. The Croydon tramlink, which the Deputy Prime Minister opened in April, was a Conservative project funded with Conservative Government money backed by the Conservative commitment to transport. A fair description of Conservative transport policy would be, "A lot done, but a lot left to do." Labour's response could be summed as, "Not much done, and no plans to do much either."

Ms Claire Ward: The hon. Gentleman is keen to take credit for the Jubilee line extension, but does he also take credit for the fact that it went massively over budget and over time?

Mr. Jenkin: That project proves the virtues of the private sector rather than the public sector. The hon. Lady seems to suggest that we should have involved the private sector more, and I have no doubt that such projects would be handled much more efficiently by a privatised tube.
The Labour party has produced not massive, great projects such as ours, but three years of dither, delay, broken promises and U-turns. After all, we waited more than a year for the integrated transport policy to be produced, even though the Labour party had 18 years in opposition to think about it. We waited for almost three years for the Transport Bill, but it will not take effect until almost four years after the Government were elected. Most of the achievements to which they lay claim are Conservative achievements. The improvement in the cleanliness of motor vehicles is the result of regulations that we introduced in government. That is why car pollution is decreasing.
It was the privatised Railfreight service that set the target for the trebling of freight on the railway in 10 years. It was the Conservatives who launched, for instance, the national cycling strategy and the safer routes to schools initiative. From the way this lot carry on, one would think that the Government had invented it all—but they are Conservative policies that they have hijacked. The only Labour initiatives have been all mouth and no delivery.
The Secretary of State said—this was quoted in the House—
I will have failed if in five years time there are not…far fewer journeys by car.—[Official Report, 20 October 1998; Vol. 317, c. 1071.]


However, three years into his Administration, congestion on our roads is increasing. It has increased by 6 per cent. since the election and is unaffected by any of the Government's policies.
On traffic levels, the Government's White Paper said:
We will therefore…consider how national targets can best help
to reduce congestion. The Government, however, now agree that that was a silly idea, and that national traffic targets are destructive. That is why they voted against a private Member's Bill earlier in the Session.
In paragraph 1.29 of the White Paper, the Government said that they wanted to
tackle the pinch points in transport networks that lead to congestion.
Barely a month later, however, following the roads review, 100 vital road improvements and bypasses were cancelled. As for the Birmingham northern relief road project, which the Government now say they support, not a sod has been turned. We were left with only 37 road schemes—and it came as no surprise that one of the first to be commenced was the A1033 Hedon road improvement scheme, which just happened to be in the Deputy Prime Minister's constituency. What we get from this Government is roads for the privileged few, but congestion and potholes for the many.
The roads White Paper claimed:
We are refocusing our approach to trunk road investment.
"Refocusing" is new Labour speak for "massive cuts". The transport White Paper said:
We commit ourselves to challenging targets and rigorous monitoring.
What exactly does that mean? It means multi-modal studies, a substitute for real action, a cry for help from the Highways Agency. Meanwhile, improvements on the A66, the A14, the M1, the A1 and many other vital trunk roads and motorways that are crying out for improvement have been frozen.
I should be interested to hear from the Minister whether he plans to go through with all the multi-modal studies, however long they take, before any action is taken on those roads. Will no improvement be made to the A14 while a multi-modal study takes place? Does the same apply to the Hindhead and Salisbury bypasses, to the A36 bypass and to the Stockport A6 bypass, which is jammed in the Government's "carry on consulting" policy? Even "carry on consulting" has failed, however, because the Government have so much consulting to do that they have run out of consultants. There are not enough consultants to conduct all the multi-modal studies that the Government have set in train: it will take years for them to clear those multi-modal studies.
Perhaps the Minister will give us a date. When will the multi-modal studies that were announced nearly two years ago be completed—or will he go abroad to find even more consultants to complete the work?
In the roads White Paper, the Government said:
adequate maintenance of existing roads is our number one priority.
They also said—twice—
We will improve trunk road maintenance, making it our first priority.

Two recent surveys have shown that roads are in a worse state than they have been since the early 1970s. That is because this Government are spending less on road maintenance than the Conservatives did.

Ms Ward: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Jenkin: I give way to the enchanting lady.

Ms Ward: The hon. Gentleman is most generous. He may have forgotten, however, that the Conservatives cut the road maintenance programme by 9 per cent. over a four-year period. Is the hon. Gentleman taking no responsibility for what happened under the last Government?

Mr. Jenkin: I would have expected the hon. Lady to have something to say about all the traffic that is being driven off the motorways, which go through and near her constituency, on to local roads. This Government have cut the road improvement budget so that traffic is driven on to the roads where her constituents shop, play and drive to work.

The Minister for Housing and Planning (Mr. Nick Raynsford): As the hon. Gentleman has raised the question of spending on road maintenance, will he confirm the following figures? In 1994–95—a year that he likes to cite because it was the best year of the Tory Administration—£2.8 billion was spent on road maintenance. Over the subsequent two years, the amount fell to £2.45 billion. Since we have been in government, it has increased to £2.899 billion. Will the hon. Gentleman concede that he was wrong to claim that the present Government had cut spending on maintenance? It was cut by the last Government; we have increased it.

Mr. Jenkin: Unfortunately, the Minister has been given cash figures rather than figures relating to prices in real terms. In real terms, in 1994–95 we were spending £3.3 billion. [Interruption.] These figures are from the House of Commons Library: the Minister may want to argue with those in the Library. Not in any single year, either past or for which the Minister is planning, does expenditure match that amount.
The present Government, not the last, are responsible for today's spending levels. I know that the strategy of the Minister's party is to try to fight the last general election rather than the next, but we will not let him do so.
In its White Paper, Labour claimed:
We are already…investing more in public transport.
That is a typical Labour lie, like Labour's promises on tax. Increased taxation and spending cuts sum up the Government's transport policy. The Secretary of State, as a departmental Minister, has failed the real test. His record shows that the Deputy Prime Minister has consistently been the Government's biggest budget loser in every spending round.
These are the killer facts—

Sir Nicholas Lyell: When we start talking about killer facts, things become very serious. Is my hon. Friend aware that I was told I should say thank you when the Government rightly kept the Great Barford bypass in the programme? Is he further


aware that, since then, absolutely nothing has been done to build it? There was yet another fatal accident earlier this month on the A428, leaving a family husbandless and fatherless.

Mr. Jenkin: I would not want to make a party political point about any tragedy. The fact is, however, that the less spent on highways maintenance and improvements, the more dangerous those roads will be and, inevitably, the more deaths and injuries there will be.

Mr. Bob Russell: The hon. Gentleman referred to killer facts. Until this moment he has not mentioned road deaths, and he has done so now only in response to an intervention. Will he at any stage mention the fact that 10 people a day are killed on our roads? Will he challenge the Government to do more about road deaths? That is a question to which people want answers.

Mr. Jenkin: As it happens, I am not majoring on road safety today, but the hon. Gentleman has raised a vital issue. I would like a debate on road safety in Government time. They tried to sneak out their road safety policy without making a proper announcement to Parliament. In the end, they made a statement, but it should be pointed out that they did so at my request. These are important matters. I continue to reflect on them, and in due course we will produce a road safety policy to keep the Government up to the mark.
I was talking about killer facts. Killer fact: Labour is spending less on local transport. The local transport grant has been cut from £329 million in 1994 to just £13 million in the current year. Killer fact: we were spending an average of £2.25 billion on the trunk road and motorway network. Labour is planning to spend a mere £300 million in the current year and in the next year. Killer fact: on road maintenance, the top priority, in our last three years, we spent £8.6 billion—[Interruption.] The Minister is touchy on the subject and we know why. We spent £8.6 billion and that was despite the recession. We maintained that spending despite the recession and the squeeze on public spending. In a boom, Labour has spent a mere £7.8 billion in the past three years and it has no plans to spend any more than the Conservatives.

Mr. Raynsford: As the hon. Gentleman referred to the Conservative Government's record in their last three years in office, will he confirm that spending on road maintenance in those last three years fell year on year from £2.8 billion to £2.6 billion to £2.4 billion? Why does he try to mislead the House with bogus statistics?

Mr. Jenkin: I am a generous chap, so I will overlook the Minister's jibe, but he cannot shuffle off responsibility for his lower spending levels using the record of the previous Government. We spent more over those three years than he spent over the successive three years.
Killer fact: Labour is spending less on the railways. Killer fact: Labour is spending less on London Transport. We averaged £830 million per year; Labour is averaging just £640 million a year. In fact, the spending level is well under £500 million this year. It is about £245 million and it is scheduled to be nil next year. Let us hope that there

will be an announcement about that. The public-private partnership is mired in delay and the cost of consultancy fees is going up and up and up.

Mrs. Gwyneth Dunwoody: I am interested in the fact that the hon. Gentleman says that Labour is spending and has spent less on railways. Is he suggesting that, somehow or other, the deal that his Government did on privatisation—that the public subsidy should consistently fall—is one that he now regrets, and that he would like a lot more public money to be invested? If that is the case, it is an interesting change of tack.

Mr. Jenkin: I am merely pointing out that the Government are responsible for spending levels today, just as we were responsible for spending levels before. It was the Secretary of State who said that he was going to change everything. If he is keeping everything the same, those are the facts that the hon. Lady has to accept.
The biggest killer fact, the killer blow to the Secretary of State's credibility, is that the Conservatives spent twice as much per year on transport as the Labour Government. Between 1984 and 1997, we spent an average of £12.2 billion per year on transport. In the past three years, Labour has spent an average of just £6.4 billion—barely half the Conservative commitment.
Against that background, there is Labour's killer tax lie. There is an extra £8 billion in taxes on the motorist compared with 1997 levels. The Government are raising £36 billion in motoring taxes and investing less than a fifth of that in transport. Half of that tax burden is paid by business, so it hits competitiveness and productivity. United Kingdom petrol is by far the most expensive in Europe. For every £20 spent at the petrol pump today, £16 is taken in fuel duty.
I will give the Minister the facts about the price of petrol because it is not a familiar topic on the Government Benches. The Government inherited a price per litre of 59.2p and it is now well over 80p per litre. The Chancellor of the Exchequer would do well to remember that. The average motorist is spending £270 more per year for fuel under Labour. It confirms that Ministers do not drive their own cars or have to fill them up. Motoring taxes have reached such a level that they now fund £1 in every £7 that the Government spend. Those are all killer facts.

Mr. Peter Snape: Does the hon. Gentleman agree with the killer fact from a Tory Minister with responsibility for transport, who said in March 1994 that increases in fuel duty and motorway tolling would help people to make more informed choices about the cost of using their cars? Was it a killer fact then, or was he day dreaming?

Mr. Jenkin: The point is that it depends on from what level duties are going up. It was the hon. Gentleman's Government who doubled the rate of the fuel escalator, who imposed three increases in the space of 18 months—calling them annual increases—and who have been found to be cheating on the rate of inflation, using a higher rate for uprating fuel duties than for uprating pensions, something the hon. Gentleman might have found out about during the local elections. The important point is that there are more taxes to come: congestion taxes and workplace parking taxes. Those are Labour taxes, not just London mayoral taxes.
The Secretary of State and the Prime Minister are responsible for the taxes that the London mayor can apply under the Greater London Authority Act 1999. The Prime Minister says that Greater London Authority members must "abide by their manifesto" commitments not to introduce congestion taxes during the first term of the mayoralty. He should be aware that he was contradicted within hours of making that statement by the Labour deputy mayor, who was elected on that Labour manifesto. She said that "in principle" she wanted to introduce congestion taxes in the first term.
I read that the Secretary of State had a meeting with the hon. Member for Brent, East (Mr. Livingstone). Perhaps we will learn what was discussed on the matter of congestion taxes. I tabled a parliamentary question, but the only answer that I got was:
We had a wide-ranging discussion of issues of mutual interest including transport.—[Official Report, 22 May 2000; Vol. 350, c. 324W.]
I bet he did. Perhaps the Minister would tell the House exactly what was discussed between the Secretary of State and the London mayor about congestion taxes.

Mr. Raynsford: I was not there.

Mr. Jenkin: Well, the Under-Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions, the hon. Member for Streatham (Mr. Hill), was there because he answered the question. Perhaps the Minister will tell the House what he expects the London mayor to do. If he decides to introduce congestion taxes, will he take responsibility so that London voters know that, when the mayor introduces a new tax on driving into London, it is Labour policy, or are we expecting another U-turn from the Government?
Meanwhile, business and industry are groaning under the burden of Labour taxes and crying out for more investment in transport. This year's Railtrack network management statement, which was delivered on time, said that £52 billion is needed. The British Road Federation Ltd. says that we need to spend £90 billion over the next 10 years to have a road system that is comparable with that of our European competitors. The Confederation of British Industry said that a total of £212 billion is needed to deliver the transport that business and industry need.
The real question is, how will the Government deliver all that investment? That would be a real transport policy. That is the real killer question for the Government. How will they deliver investment in the roads? Will they reverse the ludicrous 1998 decision to scrap the roads programme? How else can they solve congestion and pollution? How will the Secretary of State reduce the ever-growing backlog of repairs? Are the Government really going to wait until all those multi-modal studies are completed before carrying out the vital improvements that are needed?
On the railways, how will the Government help the industry to deliver their investment aspirations? When will the review of rail access charges be completed? It was meant to be completed this spring, then it was meant to be completed this summer. The rumour is that it will not be completed until the autumn. Will the Minister tell the House when the review will be completed?
What has happened to the Strategic Rail Authority's 10-year plan for the railways? Again, that was meant to be delivered this summer. The rumour is that that will be

delayed too. How will the Government revive the financial confidence of the railway after a three-year campaign of denigration of the management and staff of the railways, who have done so much to transform the railways?
I take heart from recent statements from the Government. The Under-Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions said in his reply to the debate last week:
I concede that it—
the railway—
has been successful in many respects under privatisation—
that is a change of heart—
and as a result of it. I think that we all acknowledge that there has been a great deal of innovation in the industry and a greater focus on customer care.—[Official Report, 10 May 2000; Vol. 349, c. 921.]
I am glad that he has not got into trouble for making those remarks. They are the proof of the pudding that the much denigrated privatisation of the railways has been a force for good and something upon which the Government should be building.
Will the Government therefore abandon the Transport Bill? On 9 May, the Deputy Prime Minister said:
I have been a defender of the public sector…but it costs a great deal more than the private sector.
I think that the right hon. Gentleman is beginning to learn. The experience of office might be doing some good. Does he now support privatisation? He said:
I have never accepted "public good, private bad"—[Official Report, 9 May 2000; Vol. 349, c. 710–715.]
That would be a welcome U-turn, but judging from Prime Minister's questions today, as soon as he has the opportunity the right hon. Gentleman is once again posturing to the gallery of political correctness instead of doing what is right for transport.

Sir Brian Mawhinney: Before my hon. Friend deifies the Deputy Prime Minister, will he make it one of his tasks to persuade the right hon. Gentleman to admit that when he sat on the Opposition Benches and kept saying that privatisation would accelerate the loss of passengers on the railways he was wrong? Passenger use of the railways since privatisation has increased by 25 per cent. That fact has been acknowledged by the Under-Secretary.

Mr. Jenkin: There we have it. Privatisation has achieved exactly what the Government say they want to achieve, which is to get people out of their cars and get bums on seats on the railway. That is what 40 years of nationalisation failed to achieve.
Why is the Deputy Prime Minister pressing ahead with the ridiculous so-called public-private partnership on the tube? It is based on the religion of ultimate state control. Is it not the case that the right hon. Gentleman's Department has the worst record of all Departments? It was the Select Committee on Transport, chaired by the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody), which last July stated:
The Department's achievements…have largely been confined to the publication of documents and policy statements and the establishment of task forces. As yet, there have been few tangible improvements.


What has happened since then? The answer is, not much. We have heard only that the Deputy Prime Minister has been stripped of his responsibilities for transport. They have been handed over to Lord Macdonald, who will produce a 10-year transport plan. That seems to be more of the same.
We are told that it will be an £80 billion transport plan. What real increases will there be to match the Conservative commitment? If we add up what Railtrack is investing and what the Government are spending, that easily amounts to £8 billion a year. If that is stretched over 10 years, there is no substantial change in policy.
Will the Minister tell us when the great transport plan will be produced? I tabled a question, but I know that it is rather naive to expect any useful information. However—[Interruption.] It is not funny for the Under-Secretary to laugh about concealing information from Parliament. I asked clearly if he had decided to publish his 10-year transport plan before the end of July. After all, that is what all the spin has been about. He said, as with all such departmental reports,
we will publish the plan when it is ready—[Official Report, 16 May 2000; Vol. 350, c. 89W.]
On past form, that probably means next Christmas. Will the Minister tell us when the plan will be published?

Mr. Raynsford: When it is ready.

Mr. Jenkin: There we are; the Government are a forthcoming lot.
The purpose of the debate is to give an opportunity for the Government to explain what their transport policy is. After three years of gesture politics, denigration of the transport industries and massive cuts in government financial support across the board, is it not about time that the Government started to explain how they will deliver the public transport services—the roads, the railways and the infrastructure investment—that the country needs?
When in office, the Conservatives spent more than Labour, raised more investment than Labour and kept Britain moving. When the Prime Minister says to the Deputy Prime Minister, "A lot done, a lot left to do", he is clearly referring to the achievements of the Conservatives and the failure of the Deputy Prime Minister to achieve anything.
Labour came into office promising to wave a magic wand. That was its so-called integrated transport policy. Perhaps the Minister will explain exactly what that slogan means beside the massive increase in congestion, the logjam of investment, the millions of frustrated commuters, the businesses that are groaning under their taxes and road users who are fed up with paying ever-higher taxation.
Why is it that only now the Government are contemplating a new transport plan? They had 18 years in opposition and three years in government to think about it. Is that not why it is fair to say that the Government are all mouth and no delivery? The Government tax more and deliver less. On the evidence of its record, Labour's new slogan should be, "Not much done, nothing doing, but taxes going up". Is that not the most savage indictment of the architect of the policy? The Deputy Prime Minister

was appointed to deliver a better transport system. Instead, he has been scuppered by his so-called friends at the Treasury. In fact, he has become their plaything. How they must laugh at him behind his back as they tax and tax the travelling public and cut and cut his expenditure.
In December 1999, the right hon. Gentleman was robbed of his transport portfolio. Today, he may be Secretary of State for the environment and the regions, but not for transport. He is in office, but not in power. He is discredited. He is a loser. We know that and so do his colleagues and the public. The only person who does not know it is the right hon. Gentleman.

The Minister for Housing and Planning (Mr. Nick Raynsford): I beg to move, To leave out from "House" to the end of the Question, and to add instead thereof:
welcomes the fact that the Government has substantially increased spending on transport from the levels planned by the previous Government; notes that this Government ended the automatic fuel duty escalator begun by the previous Government; deplores the previous Government's record of under-investment in transport, which left an investment backlog in important areas like road maintenance, rail and London Underground; notes that under the last Government the number of cars per mile of road went up from 70 to 100, that yearly carbon dioxide emissions from road transport increased by 26 per cent. and that by May 1997 Railtrack was £700 million behind on its rail investment and maintenance programme; and welcomes the Government's approach on an integrated transport strategy which will be delivered by an integrated Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions, and its plans to increase spending and modernise the transport system further through its Ten Year Plan for transport investment.
The people of this country want a transport system that is quicker, safer, cleaner, smarter, more reliable and good value for money, which takes them conveniently from the start of their journey to their destination. [Interruption.] Opposition Members roar with laughter at that. Surely that is a self-evident statement of what the public expect. We intend to deliver such a system through modernisation, integration and partnership.
The hon. Member for North Essex (Mr. Jenkin) spoke at length about congestion, taxes and underinvestment. I agree with him on one point. There are significant problems with transport. It is not as good as it should be. I differ with the hon. Gentleman over his ludicrous attempts to re-write history and completely ignore the Conservative party's abysmal record and its responsibility for the problems that we face.
It is naive in the extreme to suggest that the problems of today are the product of the past three years alone. The hon. Gentleman and every sensible Member of this place know that the problems that we inherited from the Conservative Government were considerable. There was serious congestion on the roads and a chronic backlog of maintenance, with emissions and pollution from traffic aggravating health problems, especially among children—[Interruption.] Those are serious problems, which hon. Members would do well not to make light of. We were faced with a deregulated bus industry that was failing to deliver quality services, and there were far too many cowboy operators. We had also a fragmented railway industry that was lacking strategic management and direction.
We inherited a transport system that had suffered for 20 years from the irresponsible pursuit of ideology, defective privatisation—[Interruption]—and neglect of


the public sector. Conservative Members clearly do not agree with my comment on defective privatisation. I am surprised. I am only echoing the words of the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Mr. Norman), who, sadly, has not stayed in the Chamber for the debate, despite making a brief appearance. Only yesterday he admitted that there were "serious shortcomings" in the privatised railways. Who is to blame for that?
The hon. Member for North Essex may not agree with the judgment of the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells. Indeed, he may not feel comfortable about the idea that his hon. Friend is defining Opposition transport policy. I feel a little sorry for the hon. Member for North Essex. I remember only too well when he proudly puffed out his chest a few months ago during consideration of the Transport Bill in Committee and said:
I speak in this Committee on behalf of the shadow Cabinet—[Official Report, Standing Committee E, 18 January 2000; c. 9.]
Today the hon. Gentleman claimed that he represented the Opposition—but it was not him who was issuing the press statements and being quoted in the press yesterday; it was Archie.

Mr. Jenkin: Lest the Minister should start enjoying himself too much, I should tell him that I sat next to my hon. Friend at the press conference. We discussed exactly what he was going to say. He would not have done that press conference without my permission, because we work as a team. The Minister has got into a muddle: it is his Department that is the unhappiest Department in the Government. As for the shortcomings in the rail privatisation, he and his hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions, the hon. Member for Streatham (Mr. Hill), would agree with me that there was much to improve on in the railways when the Government came into office. It is sad that they have done absolutely nothing except denigrate and cast slurs on the management, undermine the financial viability of the industry and cause an investment bottleneck.

Mr. Raynsford: That was rather a long intervention, but I can tell the hon. Gentleman, in the nicest possible way, that we are delighted to know that he sits next to Archie and is educating Archie.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael J. Martin): Order. The Minister knows the convention of the House as well as I do.

Mr. Raynsford: Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker.

Ms Ward: Does my hon. Friend agree that that the comments of the hon. Member for North Essex (Mr. Jenkin) seem to suggest that he is pulling the strings of the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Mr. Norman), who is a mere puppet? If it were not for the hon. Member for North Essex telling him what to say, the poor man would not know how to cope. How is that for a team working together?

Mr. Raynsford: My hon. Friend makes a good point, but it is interesting to see who is quoted in today's press. The hon. Member for North Essex is quoted—I grant him that. He was allowed to put out a short piece in the

Evening Standard about encouraging motor cycling in London. However, it was the managing director who took precedence and issued all the press statements about the Tory party's policies nationally. I am sorry for the hon. Member for North Essex, because he has clearly been relegated to the equivalent of the local Asda store manager in Manningtree.

Mr. James Gray: The Minister sounds a little sensitive on the subject of who is spokesman for what. Could that be because when transport matters are discussed in the papers, it is not him who is quoted? It is not even the Secretary of State who is quoted, but his noble Friend in the other place. The hon. Gentleman is the Minister for Housing and Planning. What is he doing talking about transport?

Mr. Raynsford: I am only too happy to confirm that the Deputy Prime Minister and my right hon. and noble Friend Lord Macdonald are quoted on transport policy, because they represent the Government on that issue. [Interruption.] As my right hon. and noble Friend is in the other place, I am speaking for the Government at this Dispatch Box. [Interruption.]

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. Hon. Members cannot shout across the Floor of the House.

Mr. Raynsford: Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
I have to remind the hon. Member for North Wiltshire (Mr. Gray) in the nicest possible way that in the Committee considering the Transport Bill it was he who identified his hon. Friend the Member for North Essex as merely the subaltern. There was a different field marshal; it was, of course, a different shadow Minister, but there we are.

Mr. Gray: I want to put the record straight. That was not the case. I was happy to identify myself as the humble lance-corporal, but there was no question about who the leader of our team was, and he is sitting on the Opposition Front Bench right now.

Mr. Raynsford: I distinctly remember the hon. Member for North Wiltshire referring to the field marshal sitting with him on the Back Benches—the lowering presence of the aspiring leader of his party.
We inherited a transport system that had suffered for 20 years from neglect and short-termism. Let me remind the House of that legacy. In the 10 years from 1986 to 1996, the proportion of public transport journeys fell by 11 per cent., while the number of car journeys increased by 21 per cent.—killer fact. Over the same period, bus journeys outside London where services were deregulated fell by 31 per cent.—killer fact. By May 1997, the funding backlog on the London Underground had reached £1.2 billion—killer fact.
Meanwhile, at the change of Government in May 1997, Railtrack was £700 million behind on its rail investment and maintenance programme—killer fact. The road system was no better. In fact, in 1997 the nation's roads were in their worst condition for 20 years—killer fact. At the same time, yearly carbon dioxide emissions from road transport increased by more than 26 per cent.
There is more of the same. The proportion of freight carried on our congested roads grew to 66 per cent. from a starting point in 1979 of 54 per cent., while rail freight fell from 11 per cent. to only 6 per cent. It is hardly surprising that in 1979 there were 70 cars for every mile of road, but when the Conservatives left office, after billions of pounds of road spending, there were 100 cars per mile—killer fact. That was their record.

Mr. Lawrie Quinn: Does my hon. Friend agree with me that one of the problems was the fact that the previous Government split up the rail freight industry into three component parts? It was only as a result of a private entrepreneur sticking Humpty Dumpty back together again that the renaissance that the hon. Member for North Essex (Mr. Jenkin) applauded came about.

Mr. Raynsford: I am happy to confirm to my hon. Friend that in the past two years there have at long last been significant increases in rail freight. I shall deal with that matter later in my speech.

Mrs. Teresa Gorman: Are we to take it from the Minister's remarks that the Labour party deplores the fact that more people can afford motor cars and like to use them on the road?

Mr. Raynsford: No, quite the opposite. If the hon. Lady will bear with me, I shall come to that issue and explain in detail our policy on road traffic and motorists. We want to see an extension of car ownership, but we recognise, as any sensible person does, that there must be limits on car usership in congested areas.
We are tackling the problems. The Opposition criticise us for it. They accuse us of being anti-motorist. That is opportunistic nonsense. The truly anti-motorist policy would be to do nothing, and to allow congestion and pollution to increase. Like the Conservatives when they were in power, before the burst of post-Government amnesia that now afflicts them, we recognise that taxation of things that damage the environment is better than taxation of things that are good for the economy. That is one of the reasons why fuel duty revenue has increased.
Indeed, the then Chancellor, the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke), said in 1994, when he increased the fuel duty escalator from 3 to 5 per cent.—[Interruption.] If Conservative Members would wait for it, they would be interested in this quote from the right hon. and learned Gentleman. He said:
Any critic of the Government's tax plans who claims also to support the international agreement to curb carbon dioxide emissions will be sailing dangerously near to hypocrisy.—[Official Report, 30 November 1993; Vol. 233, c. 939.]
The Conservative party appears determined to qualify for that designation by criticising the very policies that the Conservative Government introduced to meet international environmental targets. We remain committed to those targets.
The Conservatives do not want to look at the whole picture. They did not do so when they were in government, and from what we have heard tonight they have not changed. It is still knee-jerk and quick fix.

Mr. Jenkin: Is the hon. Gentleman seriously suggesting that the extra increases in taxation on fuel have

made all the difference between achieving the Kyoto targets and not achieving them? Will he be honest with the House and admit that the regulations on engine emissions and fuel economy have made the difference? They have been applied across the European Community and were promoted by the previous Government. Engine technology, not Labour taxes, will cure the pollution problem.

Mr. Raynsford: I know that the hon. Gentleman takes a different view from the former Chancellor on many matters, not least those related to Europe. I believe that his right hon. and learned Friend was talking a great deal more sense when he pointed out that it is not consistent to will the means to reduce emissions and then to reject policies that are designed to achieve that. I accept that the fuel duty escalator alone was not responsible for all the reductions that have been achieved. Of course it was not. Any sensible person knows that a range of policies across the economy are needed, but people do not deny the validity of measures that can make a contribution if they are serious about achieving environmental objectives. We are serious, and we shall not reject policies that contribute towards environmental gains.
Conservative Members do not want to look at the whole picture. The Government want to achieve real cuts in transport emissions, which is why we are already implementing an important package of tax measures to reduce the environmental impact of road transport, and, incidentally, to cut motorists' tax bills—a point that Conservative Members would do well to bear in mind when they make facile allegations that we are anti-motorist. Our major reform of vehicle excise duty in March 2001 will send an important signal to motorists to select cleaner, more fuel-efficient new cars.
Most purchasers of new cars will also see their tax bills fall. From this date, 4.1 million owners of smaller cars will benefit from a £55 cut in VED. Duty on ultra-low sulphur petrol is also being cut later this year, to encourage the take-up of the cleaner fuel. That follows on from the success that we had in switching the entire diesel market over to cleaner ultra-low sulphur diesel.
Those measures show that the Government are helping to protect the environment without penalising the ordinary motorist—an agenda that is being directly copied by the Opposition, judging by their recent policy paper "Greener Cars for a Greener Environment".

Mr. Gray: I thank the Minister for giving way a second time. He makes great play of the fact that we invented the escalator in 1994. Does he accept that in 1994 one third, or 28.4 per cent., of the tax raised from motorists was spent on roads, whereas today less than half of that—14.1 per cent. of the tax raised from motorists—is spent on roads? Surely that says it all.

Mr. Raynsford: The hon. Gentleman, like the hon. Member for North Essex, has chosen some rather selective statistics. I put it to him that if one is increasing investment in public transport, the proportion spent on roads will inevitably fall. That is a simple matter of economics. Percentages cannot remain constant if one increases the proportion spent in a different area.
We fully recognise that we cannot put right overnight, or even in a couple of years, the problems that have built up over two decades—but we will put those problems right.
Before I move on, I must take the hon. Member for North Essex to task over the wildly misleading figures that he quoted on total expenditure. He made some incredible claims. I have to put it to him that Conservative spending on transport in England was not an average of £12 billion, as he said. It averaged £8 billion a year during the period of the Major Government—1992–93 to 1996–97. Labour's spending on transport in England from 1997–98 to 2001–02, bearing in mind the fact that in the first two years we took over the expenditure plans of the previous Government, will average £7.6 billion. The difference is mainly due to the falling rail subsidies to train operating companies—a system put in place by the Conservative Government. So we will have no more nonsense from Conservative Members with false statistics about spending patterns. If we want a fair comparison of spending on transport, let us compare like with like.
In the 1997 annual report, the last produced by the Conservative Government, the figure given for total spend on transport in 1994–95 was £5.9 billion. That was the year that the hon. Member for North Essex selected, because it was the highest year for Conservative spending, so I will do him credit and use his figure. As the hon. Gentleman has said, total spend last year was just under £6 billion. Before anyone points out that that is a real decrease in spending, do not forget that rail subsidy has fallen over that period from £1.8 billion to £1.1 billion. Those are the facts.
Unlike the previous Administration, this Government are willing to take the tough decisions and invest for the long term.

Mr. Bob Russell: The Minister has quoted many figures. He has yet to mention road safety. Does he agree that the cost of every fatal accident is in excess of £1 million to the public purse? More than 3,000 people are killed on our roads every year, yet we spend only 10p per person per year on traffic calming.

Mr. Raynsford: I fully accept the importance of road safety. I say that with some personal feeling because I was orphaned at the age of 11 when my mother was killed with my stepfather in a car crash. I believe that road safety is fundamental, and I will refer to it in a moment. It comes into my speech, but I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will recognise that the speech has to cover a number of other issues. I certainly did not intend to downgrade the issue of road safety. I intend to give it considerable prominence.
In 1998 we published our integrated transport White Paper. At the time, we were criticised for the delay—and yes, it did take us just over a year from coming into office to publish the White Paper. The Conservative Government did not manage to produce one in 18 years. They did, however, publish a Green Paper; in 1996, they published "Transport, the way forward—the Government's response to the transport debate". I suspect that the Opposition are not too happy to be reminded of this document. It was, of course, the product of Mr. Steven Norris. The then Minister for Transport in London confessed that he much preferred to travel in the comfort of his own car rather than having to
put up with all those dreadful human beings
whom one meets on public transport.
Mr. Norris had some intelligent things to say about transport, despite that remark, which would probably make even the Bourbons feel embarrassed. When he

talked about congestion charging, he sent a clear message that the view of the Government of the time was that price signals were a highly efficient way of influencing transport demand. The Green Paper referred to
The Government's presumption in favour of introducing legislation in due course, to enable congestion charging and area licensing to be implemented.
So it is a bit rich for the Conservative party to make such a meal of criticising us for taking practical steps to pursue the very same agenda that his own party floated when in government.
The biggest difference between this Government and the previous one is that we are delivering on commitments. The fact is that under this Government there has been a 15 per cent. increase in rail passenger journeys, with 1,300 more trains running daily to meet demand. The Conservative party can talk up its gimmicks about tackling the problems that it created, but in the real world investment in rail is doubling. Twenty per cent. of railway carriages are new and 80 per cent. of stations have been modernised. Bus capacity is increasing. We now have more than 1,800 new and enhanced rural bus services in England, not as a result of deregulation but as a result of the Government's initiative to increase rural bus services. More are to come.
We have halted the decline in the number of bus passengers and we have seen investment in buses rising year on year. In London, for example, 40 per cent. of buses are new. We are also guaranteeing a free bus pass for all pensioners—something that the Conservative party will want to abolish, along with the winter fuel allowance and free television licences for pensioners.
We are also setting up a national public transport information system with a single telephone number, which will be in place by the end of this year. Nothing like this has been done before. It will integrate timetabling and ticketing information for buses, trams and trains across the country. We have a targeted programme of 41 trunk road improvements, 20 of which will provide bypasses for local communities.

Mrs. Eleanor Laing: I have been listening carefully to the Minister's argument and to his statistics. Will he admit in all honesty that the statistic that he has just given about improvement in the railways and buses would not have been possible without privatisation?

Mr. Raynsford: I refer the hon. Lady to the views of the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells, who said that serious problems were created by the privatisation process.

Mr. Jenkin: Really it does politics no good if we cannot have a mature discussion about matters of policy. He is pretending to the House that my hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Mr. Norman) disagrees with my hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest (Mrs. Laing). Of course, precisely the opposite is the case. The point that my hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest is making is that a great many benefits have come about as a result of rail privatisation. The point that my hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells made was that whatever problems still existed, the Minister had not sought to deal with them.

Mr. Raynsford: I was merely quoting from The Guardian—probably not a newspaper that the hon.


Gentleman reads. The hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells is quoted, referring to rail privatisation, as saying that there were "serious shortcomings". I rest my case.
We have introduced local transport plans so that local partnerships can improve public transport services, air quality and road safety, and tackle congestion and pollution. Provisional plans were produced last year, and the first full five-year plans will be produced later this year. Those plans are the cornerstone of our transport policy, providing, as they do, the key mechanism for delivering integrated transport at a local level. The plans provide for a longer-term, more strategic view, with greater certainty of funding for local authorities than under the previous annual system.
We have also, of course, introduced the first Transport Bill for a generation. The Bill will provide a statutory basis for bus quality partnerships and contracts, establish the Strategic Rail Authority, and provide powers for local authorities to introduce road user charging and workplace parking charges—as proposed, of course, by the Conservative Government in their own Green Paper.
Our Bill provides powers for local authorities to introduce charging, but it does not require them to do so. It will also be up to motorists to decide whether to use the roads where charges are imposed. It is an entirely voluntary charge. We have also—unlike Conservative Members—guaranteed that all income from those charges will be ring-fenced to improve local transport.
Although I want to focus on outcomes, I must emphasise that the Government recognise the need for extra investment. We have already increased spending on transport. In the 1998 comprehensive spending review, we provided an extra £1.8 billion for public transport, traffic management and road maintenance over and above what the Conservatives were planning to spend. In November 1999, we gave a £50 million boost for London bus services.
In this year's budget, the Chancellor gave an extra £280 million for transport, including £30 million for extension of the docklands light railway to City airport, £65 million for London Underground, £30 million for local authorities to spend on schemes for child safety and safe routes to school, and £20 million for 80 new schemes for safety and congestion stress points and other improvements on the trunk road network.
In response to the question from the hon. Member for Colchester (Mr. Russell), I stress that road safety is a critically important issue, and that we have set ourselves an incredibly demanding target of a 40 per cent. reduction in deaths and serious injuries. We are determined to drive forward measures that will achieve far greater safety on our roads.
We are also working on our 10-year plan for transport, which was announced last December by my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister. That plan will entail a step-change in investment in both the public and private sectors, and enable us to deliver a real transport system for the 21st century.
The Opposition claim that we are spending less on transport than they did when they were in office and that we are taxing more. They are wrong on both counts. They also claim that we have a vendetta against the motorist.

They are wrong about that, too. The truth is that we inherited a transport system that was suffering from a generation of underinvestment in terms of both money and long-term planning. We are putting that right.

Ms Ward: Will my hon. Friend give way?

Mr. Raynsford: No, I shall not give way to my hon. Friend. If she will bear with me, I am finishing my speech; I have probably been on my feet too long.
We are increasing spending and improving services. As I said, our 10-year transport plan will entail a step-change in investment. We are putting right the failures of the past and investing not just for tomorrow, but for a generation. We are making progress in modernising the transport system, and we are proud of our record. We have a commitment to put in place the policies, programmes and resources that are necessary to overcome long-standing and deep-seated problems. We intend to stick to that.
The public can see through the shallow, opportunistic and ill informed ideas that come from Conservative Members. I urge the House to do the same, and to reject the Opposition motion.

Sir Brian Mawhinney: Well, that is all right then—everything is for the best in this transport world; nothing could be better; and the Government are doing everything right. The Secretary of State is absent from this debate not because he is frit, but because he is out driving round in his Jag.
I am extremely grateful to the Minister for his speech. I am going to go back to the people of North-West Cambridgeshire and tell them how wonderful the Government's transport policies are. I am now able to tell them that, when they are caught up in traffic jams, it has nothing to do with the Minister. I can tell them that, when they have to take their cars in to be repaired because potholes have damaged the suspension, it has nothing to do with the Minister. I can say that, when they cannot get on a train, it has nothing to do with the Minister. I can assure them that, when they want to go on British Airways or Virgin but find themselves on some other airline instead, because of a cosy alliance that is not in the customer's best interests, it has nothing to do with the Minister.
I am grateful to the Minister for his speech, because he has produced a yardstick against which we shall continue to measure him. I have to tell him that it was a very foolish speech that reeked of complacency. [Interruption.] Yes, it did. I listened carefully to every word he said, and his speech reeked of complacency. He said that everyone out there is wrong, except for the Deputy Prime Minister and those who are brought in to speak on his behalf when he has something more important to do than to meet his own responsibilities by coming to the House and addressing transport issues.
Today, I do not want to range across transport issues—

Mr. Snape: I will bet the right hon. Gentleman does not.

Sir Brian Mawhinney: Did the hon. Gentleman wish to make an intervention rather than a sedentary comment?

Mr. Snape: Yes. I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. Does he think that he could


perhaps dignify this debate by being serious? If he is going to tell his constituents in North-West Cambridgeshire the stories that he has just related to the House, will he make it clear to them that those problems started only on 1 May 1997? The House really deserves better from a former Secretary of State, albeit not a very good one.

Sir Brian Mawhinney: I will tell the hon. Gentleman what I shall say to them. I shall say that, unlike the Minister, I am not confused about who is in government. I know who is in government. I know that the Government have been in office for three years. I know that they made the most preposterous claims about what they would do if only they were elected. I know that many in the electorate believed them, and that many in the electorate now know that they were conned in 1997. I am very happy to have that debate with my constituents. With every passing month, my constituents recognise just a little more clearly that the Government conned them. Transport in the United Kingdom is getting worse, not better.
As I said, I do not want to range across the full panoply of transport policy. I should like to talk about something that is dear to the Government' heart—congestion charging, and the "entirely voluntary charge" that the Minister just mentioned.
It is interesting that congestion charging remains part of the Government's policy as, slowly but surely, the political light is dawning on them. There can be no other explanation for the fact that the Government are wriggling, ducking and weaving, trying to create the impression that they are cooler on transport charging than they were. It also explains the fact that we are not going to see any congestion charging this side of a general election.
I should like, therefore, to ask Ministers a variety of questions. I shall do my utmost to be in the Chamber when the Under-Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Streatham (Mr. Hill)—whom I hold in high regard on transport matters—answers them. I shall be interested to hear his answers.
The Government talk about congestion charging as if it were a mantra. It is the stick that they have chosen with which to beat the motorist, whom they so hate. My constituents understand the disdain in which the Government hold the motorist. It is too late for the Minister to sit there on the Treasury Bench, holding his chin and shaking his head: car users have already formed a judgment of the Government, and that judgment will not change this side of a general election. He is stuck with that judgment. One of the joys of government is that change requires long lead times, and the Government are way past the point of being able to change the public's perception of Ministers' attitude to the motorist.
The Government have never said whether they see congestion charging as a means of increasing the speed of traffic or as a means of getting more traffic through a congested area. At least the hon. Member for Streatham understands transport policy, not least because he was a distinguished member of the Select Committee for some time, and will understand the significance of the next question. I shall be interested to hear his answer. I do not have great hopes of an answer from the Minister for Housing and Planning. The second fundamental question

that the Government have never addressed on congestion charging is what charge would have to be applied to reduce the amount of traffic on a road by, say, 10 per cent.
That is not a new question. The hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody) has been the Chairman of the Select Committee for a considerable time and I had many a happy discussion with her when I was Transport Secretary—discussions that, I would like to think, were marked by a good deal of mutual respect. She will recall that the question has been around for at least five years. Let me repeat it: what charge would have to be levied to reduce traffic by 10 per cent?
Let me tell the Minister a story. When I was Transport Secretary, I visited the United States. In Boston, I asked that question of one of the world authorities on urban congestion. He said, "I don't know the answer. Nobody in the world knows the answer. If you give me a large enough contract, I'll come up with some advice for you, but you should save your money, because the charge would be so great that no democratically elected politician would ever be able to enforce it."
The Government do not have a clue what sort of charge would be needed to reduce traffic by 1 per cent., 5 per cent. or 10 per cent. We are talking about just another form of taxation. I shall tell my constituents that.
The Government are frit. They do not have the guts to implement the policy that they have been going on about for years, because it might cost them votes at the election. Before local authorities decide to implement it, they ought to give some thought to the consequences of implementation.
I have a few more questions for the Minister. What will the technology be? We know that the Labour party is in favour of congestion charging. The deputy mayor of London confirmed that recently, and in the first vote of the Greater London Authority, the Labour members voted in principle to support congestion charging. This is not an idle debate. It goes to the heart of what will happen in our towns and cities throughout the country.
What technology does the Minister envisage? If he is thinking of technology rather than pieces of paper, how effective is it? A few years ago, it was not nearly effective enough. The German trials of the technology a few years ago proved it to be about 95 per cent. effective—I am speaking from memory, but that figure is more or less accurate. Can the Minister envisage the uproar that there would be in this country if 5 per cent. of all congestion charges levied were shown to be inadmissible and wrong? The Minister must think about how effective the technology is.
How would the system be enforced? There is no point in having congestion charging unless it is enforced. Who would do it? How many extra people would have to be employed, and at what cost? Does the Minister have any idea whether enforcement would be immediate or subsequent to the event?
That leads me to my next question. How can the Government square enforcement policy with their commitment to the privacy of the individual? The Government must have an enforcement policy. If they acted, at least in part, subsequent to the event, what would the privacy implications be? How intrusive in the life of individuals are the Government prepared to allow the state to be in support of congestion charging?
What work have the Government done on the economic consequences of congestion charging for shops and businesses that suddenly found themselves inside an area? Does the Minister believe that congestion charging would have no effect, some effect or a large effect on their business? Does he know? Does he care? What would be the likely effect on property prices or private leasehold arrangements? Would those affected be eligible for compensation, and who would pay it? The Government do not have answers.
Who would administer the scheme? What would it cost? The Government would want to take credit for supporting the old and the disabled, so presumably they would be given exemptions.

Mr. Jenkin: We tabled amendments in Committee for such exemptions, but none of our amendments was accepted.

Sir Brian Mawhinney: I should have known that and I am grateful to my hon. Friend for telling me. The Government mouth support for the old and the disabled, but they are not prepared to make legislative provision for them. Perhaps that is because they understand that the administrative costs of exemptions would be enormous. What about occasional visitors to a town or city? How would they be dealt with?
If the Government are interested in electronic technology, they must tell us who would pay for the installation of all the electronic equipment in every car, van, bus, truck and, for all I know, motorcycle in the land. Would the Government pay? Would people be able to reclaim the money? Would they be able to offset it against tax? The Government have no idea.
The Minister looks at me quizzically. He is beginning to understand that when he talks about congestion charging and tries to encourage some of his more gullible party members in other parts of the country to introduce it locally, he does not begin to realise the ramifications.

Mr. Raynsford: I would not want the right hon. Gentleman to labour under any illusions. I remind him that the basis of the scheme is that the issues that he has raised are to be determined locally. He might remember the time when he was Secretary of State for Transport. The Government at that time appeared to be rather interested in the scheme. Why has he done an about-turn since he left office?

Sir Brian Mawhinney: I am deeply grateful to the Minister; I was hoping that he would get up and say that. In preparation for his doing so, I went to the Library today to re-read my evidence to the Select Committee on congestion charging in London on 1 February 1995. The Minister did not even know that I gave evidence. He has no idea what that evidence was. The Under-Secretary knows, because he questioned me. The Minister could have saved himself a good deal of embarrassment if he had asked his hon. Friend before he got up to ask that question.
His hon. Friend, or the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich, could have told him that the hon. Lady—with all the courtesy with which she is traditionally

associated—managed to convey to the Committee that this Secretary of State was pretty unimpressed with charging. He did not say that it would not be Government policy, because he repeatedly said that the research was not in and that he would not make a judgment until he had all the information. I know that the hon. Lady remembers that, because we talked about this issue a few weeks ago and she went off and read the evidence. The Minister knows nothing about it. The Under-Secretary does, and he will not take me to task when he winds up.
The Minister's second point was that all this is to be dealt with locally. Let every local authority leader in the country understand that before they get into congestion charging, these are the questions that must be asked and answered. There is no point in turning to the Government, because the Government are all mouth on this issue and do not begin to understand the ramifications of their policy.

Mr. Raynsford: Does the right hon. Gentleman accept the principle of collective responsibility? Will he remind the House whether he remained a member of the Government at a time—admittedly after he personally had ceased to be Secretary of State for Transport—when the Government issued a Green Paper suggesting that congestion charging was the right way forward? Did the right hon. Gentleman resign because of that?

Sir Brian Mawhinney: No; he talked to his right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir G. Young), the then Secretary of State, and he agreed a statement in the Green Paper that bears no resemblance to what the Minister has just asked. The difficulty that the Minister has is that I know what happened and what my view was. I know what my right hon. Friend's view was. I know what was in the Green Paper, and it was not the view that the Minister would have the House believe.
I remind the Minister that it was a Green Paper; it was a judgment, taken collectively, that following the transport debate that I initiated there were still a number of outstanding issues to be resolved—certainly on this matter—before the Government could even make a decision. That is what a Green Paper is all about and the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich will recall that that is what I told her when I gave evidence on 1 February 1995.

Mr. Clive Efford: I will avoid the temptation to remind the right hon. Gentleman of the cuts that he made in the road-building programme and the red route programme in London while he was Secretary of State. Would he care to comment on the actual wording of the Conservative Green Paper, published in 1996? It said:
The Government will discuss with the Local Authority Associations what powers may be appropriate over and above those already available to them, for example to facilitate the introduction of congestion charging, area licensing, or taxing private non-residential parking.

Sir Brian Mawhinney: A Green Paper said that there were more discussions to be had and more issues to be explored. That Green Paper came out of the evidence that I gave the Select Committee. The present Government have not produced any evidence, facts or understanding. They have had no dialogue with local authorities, except


to say that they are frit and that they do not like the political consequences; in that they may be right. The Government will not do it—local authorities must do it, and take the opprobrium.
What advice would the Minister give to those in the public and social services? Who will pay the congestion charges for school buses, district nurses or police vehicles? The list goes on and on. Does the Minister think that the charges should be levied by location, by distance travelled or by time spent? None of this is a matter of interest to the Government, because they do not care. They just want to find new ways to raise taxes.
The Government are in favour of this ill-thought-through policy. It will be a damaging policy competitively, and it will reinforce in the minds of my constituents the fact that the Government hate the motorist. That is the ineluctable consequence drawn from the policy. I will also tell my constituents that the Deputy Prime Minister did not have the guts to be here to answer for himself.

Mrs. Gwyneth Dunwoody: The first thing to remember when trying to plan a transport policy for the United Kingdom is that when people are in their cars, they want everything cleared away so that they can go past; that when they are fighting to get on a train, they want much better public transport; and that when they are walking by the road, they want to be safe and not at risk from any vehicle. I regard that as a perfectly normal and balanced view, even if it means that we occasionally have slightly unrealistic debates.
I do remember the passages of arms that I had with the right hon. Member for North-West Cambridgeshire (Sir B. Mawhinney) when he was Secretary of State for Transport. I also remember him giving hell to people who he felt had not supported him correctly after one of those sessions. I am also prepared to believe that he was exceedingly sceptical about congestion charging; however, his Government were not, and subsequent Conservative Ministers not only planned to bring forward congestion charging in some form but in the run-up to the general election had actually begun to prepare for it.
The right hon. Gentleman said that it is difficult—almost impossible—to introduce congestion charging to deal with the amount of traffic on the road, but he knows that that is not true. Other countries have done it. Norway has a very effective congestion charging scheme. The Select Committee, to which he referred, which had a Conservative Chairman at the time, went to have a look at it. We saw that there were several different ways of implementing congestion charging.
The right hon. Gentleman made an important point about the protection of privacy and ensuring that one does not impinge on the rights of people travelling in a vehicle whose number is recorded. The Norwegian authorities addressed that with great care. Their scheme was highly efficient and they recorded the number plates of vehicles going through congestion charging barriers, but they were also very careful to eliminate the faces of both driver and passengers, so that whoever was operating the system could not see them. The authorities had the number and could take action against the car that had breached the rules, but people's privacy was protected. The Norwegians had thought carefully about all the objections that the right hon. Gentleman raised.
We know that congestion charging can be implemented efficiently and at very little cost. British firms were responsible for the electronic charging systems used in America. A British firm came up with the smartcard technology used in Virginia, and a British firm has been carefully selling systems throughout the world.
There is no great technical problem to overcome. The real problem is political, which is why it is absolutely essential that local authorities should take the decisions. Authorities with mediaeval towns which are very attractive but have congested streets and are hard to get in and out of will want to consider seriously some form of charging as a way of at least slowing the rate of growth. Others that are perfectly capable of absorbing large numbers of vehicles, either by using park and ride or by providing alternative forms of transport, will be quite happy to let the natural evolution of the motor car develop in a different way. Congestion charging is achievable as one of the means of managing the growth of motor traffic. That is all it is: a management tool.
What has been demonstrated today is that we have to think seriously about transport, and in terms other than, "Yah-boo, you rotten lot hate the motor car, and we love the bicycle", or, "We managed to get rid of the railway system, so it is not costing as much, but you want to run it down even further." Frankly, that is not a very high level of debate, and it does not do anybody much good.
Rail privatisation was an unmitigated disaster. Only now, years after the destruction and the splitting of an old system into unmanageable fragments, are we beginning to pull it together into some kind of manageable, efficient system. It still suffers disastrously from the way in which it was privatised. The Conservative Chairman of a Conservative-dominated Select Committee thought that the method being used by the Conservative Government to privatise the railways was a disaster. He set out the way in which he thought that it should be done. He was not against privatisation, but was convinced that what was being suggested was unworkable. He proved to be absolutely right.

Sir Brian Mawhinney: I agree that there is little value in revisiting what we did, but I am concerned by the hon. Lady's statement that rail privatisation was a disaster. Given the huge surge of investment, some of which has already been delivered and the rest of which will be delivered over the next few years, and given the huge increase in the number of passengers—bearing in mind the fact that for the previous 40 years, under nationalisation, it had gone down year after year—is not her judgment a little harsh?

Mrs. Dunwoody: My judgment when it comes to men is frequently disastrous, but when it comes to transport I am rather better. I believe that rail privatisation was a disaster, and I use the word advisedly. Frankly, under privatisation, a very old system that was disastrously run down was not improved but made even worse. It is only the pressures brought to bear by—believe me—the customers that have begun to change the situation.
Of course it is true that there are many more people riding on the railways, but it is also true that the interim years when we did not commission any new trains, buy any new rolling stock, plan any new lines or keep the existing lines up to standard proved truly disastrous.


Those factors have resulted in trains providing unacceptable levels of service to passengers, and we are only now beginning to see the companies—after all this time—buying new rolling stock and improving the lot of the passenger.
I hope that the Minister will forgive me if I do not address such delightful issues as congestion charges or what might happen in 2015, because what matters to me is the day-to-day running of the railways. Above all, safety is still high on the list of issues about which we should worry. We listen every day to the evidence being given by those who were in the appalling train crash in which so many people died. Many of the faults involved arose out of direct negligence by the company—investment had not been made, training standards had been allowed to fall and rolling stock had become run down. All those faults, which we have set out in detail, were contributory factors to that dreadful crash, including even the training of drivers and the lack of proper concern about the teaching of safety procedures to senior conductors.
My simple plea to my hon. Friend the Minister tonight is that we are waiting for the safety company that Railtrack is supposed to have set up. I know that an announcement was made yesterday and I welcome that, because the chairman, Sir David Davies, is a remarkable man and will be a great asset. However, the company should have been set up some months ago. If Railtrack's licence requires modification, that should have been considered and changed. We do not need to hear from Railtrack about a wish list of billions of pounds to be spent on projects that it will frankly never achieve unless the taxpayer coughs up. It asks for many millions of pounds on spurious grounds, when it should have been bringing forward workable plans for the new railways safety company. By now, that company should have been staffed and given a budget. Railtrack should have come forward with criticisms of the existing facilities and with the ways in which the existing working practices were deficient. None of that has happened.
I blame the management of Railtrack, of whom we have heard much in the past months. It is also part of the Government's responsibility to lean on Railtrack in a way that has not happened in the past. Railtrack's management knows that if it is to produce a high-quality railway, it must talk about the money that it intends to put in immediately. We do not need a 20-year plan that is entirely dependent on the taxpayer. Railtrack must admit unequivocally that it does not have the state-of-the-art safety measures that will save us from such a disaster in the future, and it should say how it intends to change that situation.

Mr. Quinn: Does my hon. Friend share my real concern about the upgrade of the west coast main line, because Railtrack, its contractors and project managers are now having to recruit technical expertise from the Indian sub-continent? Is not that a symbol of what has happened to our railway industry's manufacturing base? Expertise has been lost and we have not replaced it with future investment.

Mrs. Dunwoody: It is a marvellous irony that we, who built most of the Indian railways and supplied the

engineers and expertise, are now—100 or 150 years later—having to go back and ask for assistance. I am glad that the Indian railway system is capable. When I look at some of our trains, I wonder whether we will end up riding on their roofs, as people in India do; I hope not.
Some rail companies, worried about their franchise, come forward with the most wonderful plans and wish lists. Others, such as Railtrack, do not appear to deal with immediate or short-term problems but only say that they hope that things might be different in 20 years' time. That is not acceptable and it will not do.
Recently, members of Railtrack staff were criticised in the tabloids for what was reported as some sort of drunken folly. Whether the story was true or not I do not know, but Railtrack managers made a clear statement that they expected people to be sacked over the incident. That is terrifying. Many people in Railtrack need to be shifted because of what happened to 31 people outside Paddington station. If that does not happen, we have got our priorities totally wrong.
People who try to put the responsibility solely on the Government should remember that the private rail companies received their franchises in return for the promises that they made. Those promises were not simply general ideas; they were contractual responsibilities. If those companies do not fulfil those contractual obligations, no one will believe a word they say when they come forward for the new franchises. No matter how many glossy colour brochures are published by those companies, their plans will be examined in great detail.
I hope that the Minister will answer some questions from me this evening. When will the rail safety company become operational? What will its responsibilities be? How many staff will it have, and how big will its budget be? Who will take the decisions?
If railway safety is left in the hands of those who contributed to the Paddington disaster, the House will be guilty of complacency. In that case, it should consider where its true priorities lie.

Mr. Tom Brake: It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody). I trust her judgment on transport, although hon. Members on the Government Front Bench may not always be so certain. We welcome this important debate. I am happy to speak to the Liberal Democrat motion and against the motion tabled by the Conservative motion.
From what we have heard it is clear that the Government are failing in their transport policy. They came to office pledging to reduce the overall level of traffic on our roads. That pledge has been broken.
The Government came to office planning to save the London underground. That pledge has been broken: London underground has not been saved, but a bill for at least £60 million in consultancy fees has been run up—with no guarantee that the public-private partnership will go ahead. The public sector comparator could still find the PPP financially unacceptable.
The Government came to office promising that our air is not for sale—another transport pledge that has been broken.
However, even though the Government's record is one of delay, cancellation and the occasional U-turn, I can only admire the brazen opportunism and astounding collective amnesia exhibited by the Conservative party in tabling the motion before the House. Conservative Members seem to be suffering under a delusion that three years in opposition absolves them of responsibility for decisions before year zero of the new Labour regime. I am happy to remind them of their record on transport.
It was the Conservatives who introduced the fuel duty escalator. It was the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke), who said, as we have heard already:
Any critic of the Government's tax plans who claims also to support the international agreement to curb carbon dioxide emissions will be sailing dangerously near to hypocrisy.
What we have heard tonight certainly qualifies as sailing dangerously near to hypocrisy, if not colliding with it.
It was the Conservatives who first investigated the use of additional charges for road use in cities. In 1994, the then Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Major), said:
I do not expect to have people dancing in the streets in delight at the concept of road pricing but if you look at the environmental problems, you can see the impetus behind the policy and the necessity.
It was the right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir G. Young), then Secretary of State for Transport, who said at his party conference in 1995:
I believe the key is not to build lots more roads but to make more intelligent use of the ones we have.
The Tory mayoral candidate, Steven Norris, said as recently as 1997:
I take the view that you cannot pander to traffic growth.
Steven Norris, unlike the hon. Member for North Essex (Mr. Jenkin), does not rubbish plans to tackle traffic growth.
After years of failed transport policies, during which the Conservatives were convinced that building more roads would solve congestion, they at last began to realise that that was not possible. They began to realise that the continued growth of road traffic was unsustainable. Even they noticed that motor vehicle traffic increased every year, according to the House of Commons Library, by a total of 75 per cent. They began to realise that despite the biggest road-building programme since the Romans, the condition of Britain's roads had deteriorated to the worst on record. They began to realise that with no alternative strategy, there would be no hope of keeping to internationally binding Kyoto agreements to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
That insight, acquired during 18 years of government, was, regrettably, jettisoned within a matter of months of being in opposition in favour of a transport policy that is about soundbites and spin. It must have been dreamt up at a joyriders' convention. The Conservatives want to take us back 20 years in terms of transport policy, in a desperate attempt to shore up their support. My right hon. Friend the Member for Ross, Skye and Inverness, West (Mr. Kennedy), the leader of the Liberal Democrats, was right to attack the Conservatives recently for constantly proposing policies that they rejected in office. Their transport policy is just another example.
The Conservatives say that they will publish a balance of account showing what the Government raise in transport taxes and how it is spent. That may be fine, but

the Conservatives never did it in 18 years of government. The Conservatives say that they will improve road maintenance. That is all well and good but, again, after 18 years of Conservative government, the roads were in the worst condition on record.
The Conservatives say that they will save the tube through privatisation, but forget that they never did so when in office. In fact, they created a maintenance backlog of £1.2 billion. Right hon. and hon. Members do not have to take my word for it. The hon. Member for North Essex said in the House:
We did not do enough for the tube—I would be the first to acknowledge that—[Official Report, 27 January 1999; Vol. 324, c. 436.]
The Conservatives say in their new rail policy that they will improve the railway service. We all support that. They will ensure that all passengers without a train seat travel for free, end the practice of running lesser services on Sundays and end long ticket queues. All that is missing from that list is a requirement for all railway staff to wear a baseball cap when they are available to be spoken to—or is it when they are not available to be spoken to?
The Conservatives do not say how any of their proposals can be achieved; they certainly do not say how they will pay for them. They say that they will talk up the railway and encourage investment. That must be how they will pay for their promises. That is the size of their strategy for investment in the railway service that they privatised.
As part of their fair deal for the motorist—or their joyriders' charter—the Conservatives propose allowing motorists to turn left on a red light, provided that it is safe to do so, to ease traffic flow. They will also be doing away with those irritating traffic-calming impediments. What is fair to the motorist will be fatal for the pedestrian.
It is clear to Liberal Democrats that, regrettably, the Government have so far failed to honour their pledge to develop an integrated transport policy so as to fight congestion and pollution. They promised to reduce traffic overall—so far they have failed. They no longer even aim to reduce traffic; they accept that the number of vehicles on our roads will continue to rise and that the amount of traffic will continue to increase.
In contrast, we are clear about the fact that traffic reduction is crucial to help us to meet our carbon dioxide emission targets. It is also crucial for business.
The right hon. Member for North-West Cambridgeshire (Sir B. Mawhinney) referred to the costs of congestion charging schemes. That is a valid point, but he did not refer to the costs of congestion itself. The CBI estimates that it will cost industry about £20 billion a year—not an inconsequential sum.
Traffic reduction is also crucial in the reduction of death on our roads and of death and ill health caused by air pollution. The right hon. Gentleman did not refer to the obvious costs associated with that problem.
To sell off National Air Traffic Services in the face of opposition from pilots, air traffic controllers and more than 100 Labour Back Benchers is unnecessary.

Sir Brian Mawhinney: The hon. Gentleman says that Liberal Democrats are in favour of reducing traffic. Will he offer us a small indication of how that might be done?

Mr. Brake: I am happy to respond to that point. As the right hon. Gentleman pointed out, congestion charges


may have a role to play—as would a substantial improvement in public transport, which would encourage people to switch to it from car use.
I am happy to repeat the call for NATS to remain as a public company, allowed to raise funds for investment from the private sector.
Liberal Democrats are clear—as are Londoners—that the state of the tube has worsened under the Labour Government. However, our answer is not the Conservative folly of privatisation, nor the Government's mish-mash of partial privatisation and fragmentation. Our response is to raise the finance needed to revitalise the tube system through the issue of bonds against guaranteed future revenue streams. I am sure that Susan Kramer—as London's transport supremo—will fight for that—[Interruption.] Does an hon. Member want to intervene? If not, I am happy to repeat that Susan Kramer is London's transport supremo.
I hope that the Government will listen to the message that came across clearly at the recent elections for the Greater London Authority: Londoners do not want another rail privatisation fiasco on their hands—even only a partial one. I hope too that the hon. Member for Brent, East (Mr. Livingstone) will listen to Londoners and honour his pledges, and that he will not be tempted to compromise simply to secure his early return to the Labour party.
I am a regular commuter on Connex South Central, whose representatives were willing to talk to my constituents about the future of rail services; it appears that the Go-Ahead group has decided to pull out of the arrangements. I confirm my party's support for the establishment of the Strategic Rail Authority. We believe that it will improve regulation on the railways, although its scope could have been widened to include other modes of transport. The existing remit of the SRA should be extended to cover the expansion of the rail network where appropriate. As a priority, the SRA should simplify ticketing throughout the network.
In the wake of the Paddington crash, the public are still rightly concerned about safety. Immediately after the disaster, the Deputy Prime Minister announced that he was minded to remove the setting of safety standards from Railtrack. We supported him on that matter, but we were much less comfortable with his proposal, announced in February, that an independent subsidiary company of Railtrack should be responsible for transport safety. Railtrack should not be judge and jury on such an important matter.
We remain concerned that there is still a considerable shortfall of funding for investment in the railways. Without the investment, there will be no improvement in the services promised by the Government. If they continue to reduce the amount that they spend on the railways, it is increasingly likely that it will be left up to the passenger to make up the difference. That is why we believe that the tapering of subsidies has to be called into question.
Our tax plans reflect our transport priorities. We would invest in public transport first, securing a leap in the quality of public transport, and only then consider the introduction of congestion charges. We would abolish road tax on all cars of up to 1600 cc; this would be paid for by a small compensatory rise in the fuel duty. With

two thirds of British drivers driving cars of 1600 cc or below, the majority of drivers would be better-off. The policy would also have the beneficial environmental effect of encouraging smaller engined cars. That is the right way to proceed.
The debate about transport needs an infusion of honesty. The Tories' promises will come to nothing unless they are prepared to say where they will raise the finance to improve our transport infrastructure. In 18 years in government, they failed to invest in roads, rail and the London underground. Tonight, they have said nothing to make me believe that they will do any better next time. They are all mouth and no delivery.

Mr. Peter Snape: I declare an interest: I am the chairman of Travel West Midlands, a subsidiary of the National Express Group, and I am a director of other National Express subsidiaries in the bus industry.

Mrs. Gorman: Will the hon. Gentleman repeat that?

Mr. Snape: The hon. Lady, who is not averse to dodging the rules of this place occasionally, asks me to repeat that; I am delighted to do so. I speak as the chairman of Travel West Midlands and I am the director of various National Express Group subsidiaries. I hope that satisfies her. My other interests—I am a member of the RMT—are in the Register of Members' Interests.
I hope that the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Mr. Brake) will forgive me if I do not pursue most of the points that he made. However, I am inclined to agree with him about the future role of the Strategic Rail Authority. I shall return to that subject shortly.
These are enormously depressing debates for those of us who have a long-standing interest in transport. The hon. Member for North Essex (Mr. Jenkin) made a speech that I have heard umpteen times—so many times, particularly in Committee, that I would have thought he would have refined it by now, but he has not. He has done his usual disappearing act. He opened this debate by demanding the presence of my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister, and he opened the proceedings of the Committee stage of the Transport Bill by making exactly the same speech. He then did a disappearing act there. Of the 36 or 37 sittings of the Committee, he missed more than he attended. He has disappeared again tonight and it brings the House into disrepute when Opposition spokesmen behave in that way. The hon. Member for Poole (Mr. Syms) has been left to pick up the pieces and, no doubt, he will do that in his own adequate fashion. However, it is still a sad commentary on Conservative policy.
Stale statistics have been trotted out. Usually they are the prerogative of the motoring organisations, the AA and the RAC. Although I have been a member of the AA for many years, it has never asked me for my views on the subject, but it still trots out the same old rubbish about £36 billion being raised in taxation and £6 billion being spent on the road network. There is some excuse for the AA; it is part of the motoring lobby. However, I do not think that there is any excuse for someone who purports to be a shadow Minister of Transport to trot out all those statistics.
As the hon. Member for Colchester (Mr. Russell) reminded us, there are more than 3,000 road deaths every year. Each one of them, as he again rightly reminded us, has a financial cost as well as a human cost—a point that was made by my hon. Friend the Minister for Housing and Planning. It costs about £1 million for each accident, so can we add that sum to the £6 billion that is spent? Can we add on to the £6 billion the £16 billion in congestion costs, which is the estimate of the Confederation of British Industry? Shall we add on all the police, court and legal time that is spent on the aftermath of the motoring offences committed? If we do so, the equation does not look too attractive, although it is beloved of motoring organisations and idle hacks on daily newspapers, who spend their lives driving cars and reporting that the ashtray is in the wrong place to guarantee that they will get another new car to test within three or four weeks.
Surely transport receives better treatment than it is given in the House. I was disappointed by the speech of the right hon. Member for North-West Cambridgeshire (Sir B. Mawhinney), who did not come up with anything new. When a Conservative Government gave local authorities the power to impose residential charging schemes, some Tory backwoodsmen asked how that would affect shops and visitors to people's homes, as though an impossible barrier were being erected around residential areas. Those schemes have worked well, and some are in constituencies that have long been represented by Conservative Members.
The right hon. Gentleman went through a list of road schemes that he said we are still considering. I am interested in one scheme in particular—the Hazel Grove bypass around Stockport. I do not represent that part of the world, but I come from that area. I remember, as a councillor on Bredbury and Romiley urban district council—that ages me somewhat—taking part in a debate in Stockport about that particular road. That was in 1971, so delays in building roads are nothing new and did not start on 1 May 1997.
I come now to the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody). Parliamentary privilege is precious to all hon. Members and should not be abused. Blaming Railtrack for Ladbroke Grove when an inquiry into that accident is taking place is an abuse of parliamentary privilege. I have no brief for Railtrack, but I hope that my hon. Friend will reflect that Railtrack did not design the offending layout at Ladbroke Grove; it was designed in British Rail days. Railtrack inherited the design in 1994, when it was still a public sector company.
That design is pretty complex, but, goodness me, in my youth as a railway signalman the entry to most railway terminuses was guarded by a multiplicity of semaphore signals, and that was a pretty complex business. To suggest, as some of my hon. Friends occasionally do, that drivers have passed signals at danger only since the railway was privatised is to ignore a long history of railway accidents. Ladbroke Grove was an enormous tragedy, but we should let Lord Cullen decide who was responsible and make recommendations accordingly.

Mrs. Dunwoody: My hon. Friend has chosen to accuse me of abusing parliamentary procedure, and I have to say that that is the first time in 30 years that anyone has said anything of the sort. I certainly believe that Lord Cullen

must make his recommendations, but I am deeply concerned about the fact that straight after the accident, Railtrack gave certain undertakings about the immediate creation of a railway safety authority. I made that point then and I make it now, and I resent the suggestion that I am doing anything that in any way abuses parliamentary procedure.

Mr. Snape: I stand by what I said, and my hon. Friend can resent what she likes. The future of the railway industry is done no great service by attacks such as those that have just been made, particularly when the Government have set up an inquiry to look into all the causes of the Ladbroke Grove disaster and to make proposals that will, I hope, be debated and accepted as quickly as possible.
Another allegation is that Railtrack is unfit to investigate rail accidents or to have any responsibility for rail safety. If Railtrack does not do that, who will? It is easy to demand independent inquiries, but the technicalities of rail safety are complicated and people investigating rail accidents must have prior knowledge of the industry, track layout and how signalling is designed and installed. Finding someone who is independent and who has the knowledge to take on that responsibility on a day-to-day basis is no easy task.
We ought to get away from the concept that, to us, everything that the previous Government did is automatically bad, and, to the Tory party, everything that the Government are doing is automatically bad. Those who work at any level in the railway industry deserve better from this House.
I cannot understand the present-day Conservative party from the terms of the motion: a Conservative Opposition are denouncing a Labour Government for not spending enough public money on transport. I was always brought up to believe that the wicked Tories were against public expenditure, but somehow they have decided that there is some political mileage to be gained from hammering such spending on transport.
I do not want to bore the House too much with my experiences, but I have seen lots of public money spent on the railway industry since the late 1950s when I began working in it. I have seen lots of public money wasted on it by Conservative Governments. I well remember the aftermath of the 1955 modernisation plan, when millions of pounds of public money was spent on wiring up railway sidings that had not seen a wagon for years. Overhead wires were provided for sidings that had gone rusty before I was born.
I saw the Government of the day—a Conservative Government, I must remind the House—insist as part of that modernisation plan that railway locomotive purchase was spread as far around the country as possible. The result—I speak from memory, but I think that I am right—was 32 different types of diesel locomotives, many of which were in the knacker's yard in a decade because they were not any good. Is the Conservative party these days saying that all public expenditure is necessarily a good thing and that a Labour Government who look carefully at their expenditure priorities are misbehaving? I would have thought that the reverse would be true.
Can we get away from the philosophy that everything was wonderful when the railways were publicly owned and when they were privatised everything was appalling? I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich that the previous Conservative Government's system of privatisation was disastrous because it was introduced in too much of a hurry to get it out of the way before the then impending election.
However, the system has one advantage now that it is beginning to settle down, as my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich said. At last, and for the first time in my life, the railway industry is out from under the dead hand of the Treasury. Before people are allowed to renew franchises, they will have to pledge some long-term investment in the industry—not something that we could ever get out of the Treasury.
Again I refer to some of the disastrous mistakes following the 1955 modernisation plan—but we were lucky. I remember Peter Parker, as the chairman of British Rail, fighting desperately for a three-year investment plan in the industry, yet under franchising we can demand 20-year investment plans. The train operating companies do not just lease trains and run them; we can demand that they make improvements to infrastructure along the route that they have chosen to acquire. We could never do that in BR days.
Indeed, more often than not, the first piece of expenditure to be cut by successive Governments—Tory and Labour alike—was capital investment in our public sector industries in general and our railway industry in particular. I remind the House of the saga of the west coast main line electrification and modernisation. We did the first bit from Crewe to Liverpool and Manchester in 1959 and the second bit from Euston to Crewe in the mid-1960s, but it took another decade to complete the bit from Crewe to Glasgow—I nearly said Edinburgh—where it stopped in those days. That was largely because the Treasury, under successive Governments, could never resist interfering with investment plans.

Mr. Quinn: May I advise my hon. Friend that about 65 per cent. of all the design work with which I was personally involved in 18 years of working in the railway industry remains in some dusty drawer? I do not think that that is a reflection on my abilities as a designer, but it supports his point.

Mr. Snape: I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I hope that those of us with practical experience of these matters can occasionally put politics aside and say that we have to start from where we are today if we are determined to have a better railway industry. There is no point harking back to the glory days—either pre-grouping, since nationalisation or beyond.
Of course the Tories got it wrong in the mid-1990s because they were in such a hurry, but other countries that are privatising have learned from our mistakes. Australia, which is a case in point, takes the same view that many of us are coming round to: if the railway industry is left in the public sector, it is always subjected to the vagaries of the economy. I am not saying that the private sector is immune from those vagaries, but at least long-term investment plans are part of the railway hinterland in a way that they never were in the past. We ought to recognise that.
I wish that the Conservative party would grow up and participate in a proper debate. In other parts of the world—particularly other parts of Europe—these matters are not considered worthy of political discussion, and whether Governments are of the left or of the right, a basic transport infrastructure is accepted as necessary and something that has to be paid for in any civilised society. However, the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Mr. Norman) yesterday issued a press statement entitled "The new railway—serving the customer". As far as I am aware, no statement was made in the House, but I shall put that to one side.
The hon. Gentleman made some sensible proposals—for example, that franchise terms should be reviewed if the franchisee does not live up to them. Hon. Members on both sides of the House would not argue with that, but occasionally he moved into the realms of fantasy. One paragraph, entitled "Standing is Free", says:
For too long passengers, particularly on London commuter lines paying full fares, have found themselves having to stand. Train companies now need to grasp the fact that their product includes a seat. Selling a fare without the capacity to provide a seat is like selling a hotel room without a bed.
Well, it is not, but that is what the hon. Gentleman says. He also says:
In passenger speak, it is a "rip off".
There is a good modern Tory term; the Tories would know all about that. He goes on:
Therefore we would ask the SRA to introduce a new policy whereby after three years of a new franchise all customers unable to get a seat would be entitled to a refund.
Administering that proposal should be great fun for somebody. It would mop up a few unemployed bureaucrats, I dare say, and there would be fun and games when the 8.47 from London Bridge arrived at Victoria and the passengers lined up to complain.
What about the people who choose to get into the front coach of a train arriving at a dead-end terminus? Many do so, all over the country, to get ready for the off. Should we compensate them as well? My hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich referred to the Indian situation, but that would lead to an overcrowding problem as people in one half of the train would stand on the roof, and on each other's heads, to qualify for a refund, while everybody else would demand breakfast because there was lots of space in the carriages.
Someone ought to take the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells aside and teach him the facts of life, particularly if one remembers when the time came—not much more than a decade ago, and under BR and public ownership—to replace the diesel multiple unit fleet. A Conservative Government insisted that that could be done only if three-car DMUs were replaced with two-car DMUs. Now the Conservative party complains about overcrowding. If ever a railway industry was designed to be overcrowded, it was that which the previous Government left us.
I hope that we can bring a little common sense to these debates. I am glad that the hon. Member for North Essex has returned to his seat. I hope that he will give serious and mature consideration to these matters instead of behaving like a red-nosed comedian without the red nose, particularly as he should obtain a new script from time to time. It is impossible to deliver the same jokes to the same audience all the time. I realise that the audience for these debates is not a great one, but those who attend regularly


would appreciate his getting a new scriptwriter so that we could at least hold a sensible and grown-up discussion on the railway industry. People in the industry deserve better than the debates that usually take place in the House and they certainly deserve a lot better than the cliched and hackneyed nonsense that they hear from the hon. Gentleman.

Mrs. Virginia Bottomley: Unlike the hon. Member for West Bromwich, East (Mr. Snape), I am no expert on transport matters, although I declare an interest in that I have a brother who is a railwayman and is as passionate about and obsessed with railways as the hon. Gentleman is—and, of course, I used to be married to a Transport Minister.
I know, however, that my constituents care more about transport today than they have at any stage since I have been their Member of Parliament. Among their heroes is my hon. Friend the Member for North Essex (Mr. Jenkin). He visited my constituency—as did every Conservative Minister with responsibility for transport—to witness one of the most shameful problems, the A3 at Hindhead, which is the only single carriageway stretch between London and Portsmouth, and contains the only traffic lights that the four Scottish roads Ministers would encounter if they travelled from Scotland to Portsmouth.
My hon. Friend has identified and articulated my constituents' outrage at the fact that £17 out of every £20 that they spend on petrol goes to the Chancellor. My constituents include nurses, pensioners and school-run mums—people who have no option but to drive. In return for paying that exorbitant tax, they are asked to wait in their cars for hour after hour. It is a disgraceful situation.
The Government recently produced a Countryside and Rights of Way Bill. It has been met with a hollow laugh in my constituency. The land involved locally is a special protection area under the European Union birds directive—a site of special scientific interest. However, all my constituents are confronted with is what my hon. Friend described as the "Carry On Consulting" policy.
Local people were initially hopeful about the review of trunk roads. They were enthusiastic, and I myself participated, expecting the process to be straightforward. We thought that if the proper answers were given on safety, access, economic development, and routes to Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight—all of which had been held up by the situation at Hindhead—our position would be approved. During the 18 years of Conservative Government the rest of the A3 was improved, effectively to motorway standard, but the Hindhead problem is appalling. "Carry On Consulting", because what was announced in the review of trunk roads, means further reports and discussion of whether tolls should play a part in the A3 Hindhead problem.
My hon. Friend the Member for North Essex suggested that there were too few consultants to undertake the work. I am delighted to say that an excellent team, MVA, has undertaken it. It is clear that MVA will produce a textbook illustration of a place where tolls could never be used. Tolls would lead to more rat-running, and toll plazas would use more of what is internationally precious land. However, the Government have been given what they wanted—the opportunity for further delaying tactics. I am informed that even when the report is completed, it will

be submitted to the south-east England regional assembly. There will be more talking shops and more delay—and, presumably, the final result will land on the Government's desk shortly before a general election. My constituents are heartily sick of all this, and totally cynical about the device.
Progress has been achieved in one respect. My right hon. Friend the Member for North-East Hampshire (Mr. Arbuthnot) and I asked, on a monthly basis, for one of the 10 environment Ministers to visit Hindhead. At long last, after three years, the roads Minister has visited it, but this is an example of the way in which the Government behave. They do not govern for the many; they govern for their friends. It is disgraceful that it took three years for one of 10 Ministers to visit the site of the most serious problem in the south-east. I believe that the Government have no credibility on this issue. People are being taxed more, and are getting less.
Those for whom I feel most sorry are people in the Highways Agency such as Paul Arnold, who has been there for 14 years, and Graham Hodgson, from Surrey county council, who have had to meet irate residents groups who were asking for traffic-calming measures and other palliative steps because of the Government's failure to discharge their responsibilities.
This is a crucial route. I ask the Minister not to offer more consultation reports or talking shops, or to refer the matter back. At a time when people are paying more than ever before, this is a Government responsibility, and the Government should discharge it.

Mr. Robert Syms: I start by declaring an interest. In the Register of Members' Interests, it is stated that I am a director of a family business that has some interests in transport. We may stray into areas that may by affected, so I hope that hon. Members accept that.
We have had an interesting debate on a subject that is important for most of our constituents. It is a pity that more Back Benchers could not speak in the debate. All of us as constituency Members appreciate that the issue is dear to the heart of many Members because of the number of times that it comes up in surgeries and in letters, with people saying what they want.
The debate was ably started by my hon. Friend the Member for North Essex (Mr. Jenkin), who set out an indictment of the Government's policies. It was chapter and verse; it was game, set and match. The Government have learned a lot about their policies from the impact that they are having.
The Minister for Housing and Planning did his best to defend the Government on a difficult wicket. I think that we all acknowledge that defending the Government's policies on transport is not easy. He did it in his normal way, and he did his best. He said in his peroration that the Government were spending more and taxing less than the previous Government—and he kept a relatively straight face, so he did a reasonable job.
The fact is that the Government are taking £36 billion from motorists. That is a lot of money—£8 billion more than when they came into office. One pound in every £7 collected by the taxpayer comes from motorists. As we have heard, of every £10 spent on petrol, £8 is tax.
For most people, a car is a necessity. Most people need one to work, to get to school, to go to hospital, to go to the supermarket and to undertake the ordinary tasks that hard-working families in communities must undertake. One gets the feeling in many of these debates that Members think that people with cars are fat cats with unlimited amounts of money, but many people find it difficult to run a car.
Being hit by higher taxes under the present Government is bound to have an effect on the family budget, and, indeed, on people who are not necessarily the richest; some of the poorest people, and many of those who live in rural areas, will be affected. Sixty-nine per cent. of households own cars, but 85 per cent. of households in rural areas own them. The Government have hit them hard. Under Labour, the average motorist is paying £270 more a year for petrol than under the previous Government.
Roads are key to any integrated strategy, because most people travel by road. Most goods travel by road. The Minister said that when we came to office, there were 70 cars per mile of road, and when we left, there were 100. That is a sign of Conservative success, of a more prosperous economy, with people able to buy cars. In many instances, those who in earlier times would not have been able to afford a car could do so. Many people have two cars.

Mr. Snape: If 100 cars per mile of road is a tribute to Conservative party success, and the allegation in the debate is that there are even more cars on the roads and even more congestion now, is that a hallmark of Labour success, too?

Mr. Syms: As we become more prosperous, it is evident that there will be more cars on the road. The way to deal with it is to increase capacity—to increase the value of the road system. People aspire to have a car. They work hard. They expect to be able to buy a car, so that they can have a better standard of living.

Mrs. Gorman: Is my hon. Friend aware that statistics on the use made by each family of their cars show not that every car is on the road all the time, but that one or other of the cars is on the road at any one time? It is not true to suggest that congestion is caused by more cars on the road. It is caused by the run-down condition of the roads, which have been getting worse under the present Government.

Mr. Syms: My hon. Friend makes a persuasive point. I hope that those on the Government Front Bench were listening. The fact is that £36 billion comes from motorists, but only slightly over £5 billion—about 15 per cent.—is being spent on roads. That is having a dreadful effect on our roads system. We experience log-jams and breakdowns. People who travel round the country to do their jobs have greater difficulty.
What is the Government's big idea? What have they decided to do to solve the problems? In their long awaited Transport Bill, they have proposed congestion taxes and workplace parking. Brilliant. What does that mean? It means that the answer to the problems of our nation is more tax—to raise more money from more people.
In the 1998 spending review, the Treasury assumed that £1 billion would be raised by that method by 2005–06. The Minister said that the charge would be voluntary. That is an interesting comment, bearing in mind the fact that the Government are underfunding local authorities' spending on transport. I suspect that if the Treasury is making the assumption that £1 billion will be raised by the charge, all the pressure in the world will be put on local authorities. The Government will say to them, "You have the right to introduce this charge, and if you do not, why should we give you the money?"
We have an interesting situation in London. The Labour party ran on a manifesto of no charges for four years. The Conservatives ran on a manifesto of no charges. At the first vote in the London Assembly, the Labour party took a different view. The public in London, especially those who voted, have been sold a false prospectus on congestion charging.
Those who read the Evening Standard, as most of us do, will have seen the article "Commuter Watch 2000" in Monday's edition. It clearly says:
The new Mayor is considering a £5-a-day congestion charge… But the blunt truth from our 3-month CommuterWatch survey of train, Tube and bus services is that the majority are as poor or even worse than when we tested them in 1997 and 1998.
Who was in office in 1997 and 1998? Ministers often forget the fact, but it was them. They must accept responsibility for the situation in London.
The Government are taxing more and delivering less. My right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Cambridgeshire (Sir B. Mawhinney) asked some extremely pertinent questions about congestion charging. I hope that the Minister will answer those questions when he winds up the debate, so that hon. Members can be better informed. I believe that congestion charging is a bad thing—but it will probably be a good thing for the Conservative party. We oppose such charges, and that will make a tremendous difference in the forthcoming election campaign. [Interruption.] There was a Green Paper and a discussion paper, but we never introduced charges.
Looking at the implications, and having served on the Transport Bill, I have no doubt that the proposal is bad news for motorists, and bad news for town centres and urban areas that will be blighted by the taxation.

Mr. Brake: Would congestion charging be bad for people's health?

Mr. Syms: I do not think that congestion charging would make any difference to people's health. According to the study of road congestion charging in London, to reduce traffic by discouraging people who travel in those areas, the charge would have to be so high as to be politically unacceptable—as my right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Cambridgeshire said.
Congestion charging is another way of taking money out of people's pockets. The Government's policies have more to do with the Dick Turpin approach to politics: stand and deliver. Most people are having to pay more in tax. They stand in traffic throughout the country, no doubt wondering why the Deputy Prime Minister has not delivered what he said he would do before the general election.
There is no such thing as a painless tax rise. There is a cost to families, a cost to businesses, a cost to companies, and a cost to British businesses competing abroad. The Government have substantially added to those costs.
Last week, an article in The Times said that the Government were considering charging people £5 for motorway journeys of less than 10 miles. Will the Minister give some clue as to whether that story is true, and where the Government intend to implement such charges? In urban areas, where people need to commute on motorways even for short journeys, such a charge would have an appreciable effect on the way in which people travel. It could easily drive people off the motorway network into other areas where extra traffic would not be acceptable.
The road network consists of 226,779 miles. It is a great national asset, and it needs to be properly maintained because in the long term our country will benefit greatly if that asset can deliver a world-class economy. We have a road maintenance backlog on local roads alone of £5 billion. The road maintenance bill is rising by £1 billion each year for want of stitch-in-time maintenance. All that is having an impact on British competitiveness. The United Kingdom has 500 bypasses outstanding, and many communities suffer heavy through traffic. Many have been waiting many years for a bypass, and their hopes were dashed by the Government's action when they came to office and badly attacked the roads programme.
Let us consider the position of motorists in Britain versus that of motorists in Europe. The AA's great British motorists 2000 study showed that in Britain we spend more time commuting, suffer the worst road congestion in western Europe, pay the most for petrol and diesel and for cars, are more likely to have our cars broken into, are least likely to find workable alternatives such as public transport or cycling, have a lower level of car ownership than in Europe, are highly taxed and receive the lowest return on investment in roads and public transport.
The AA concluded:
At the root of this depressing picture lies the crisis of investment. The pitifully low levels of money spent on the UK's crumbling transport infrastructure have weakened every link in the chain, from poor maintenance to bad day to day management.
My hon. Friend the Member for North Essex set out the record of the previous Government very well. We should leave a large pile of pink ribbon and some nice scissors so that when Labour Members open schemes started by the Conservative party they can go along and snip the tape, and say, "Thank goodness for John Major and Margaret Thatcher." They contributed greatly to this country. We invested more than £26 billion in motorways and trunk roads. That was an important investment, and a sign of the priorities of the Conservative party on this important issue.
As my hon. Friend has said, we introduced many schemes, including the docklands light railway, Manchester metrolink, Sheffield metro, the channel tunnel, the Heathrow express, the Jubilee line and the Croydon tramlink, the M25—I could go on and on about Conservative successes. The Labour Government are not going to match that, because, having badly cut the roads programme when they came to office, they sent any difficult or knotty problems off to be studied.
As my right hon. Friend the Member for South-West Surrey (Mrs. Bottomley) said, that has often kicked such items into touch. Many of the multi-modal studies will

come back well after the next general election. The Government will have time to kick the issues into touch. Endless studies are not the solution. We need action, and action is what people will get from the Conservative party. We need not more consultants but more people building roads and making a contribution towards the future of our economy.
We have had an interesting debate. We heard an excellent speech from my right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Cambridgeshire, who posed some pretty tricky questions that the Minister will have to answer. We heard an interesting spat between the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody) and the hon. Member for West Bromwich, East (Mr. Snape), who is usually wheeled out on these occasions to give the same speech that we have heard in times past. We enjoy his speeches, and he made a memorable contribution when he said that privatisation of the railways had got rid of the dead hand of the Treasury.
We heard a great deal from the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Mr. Brake), mainly about Conservative party policies. His speech seemed to owe more to the fact that he is in a Conservative-Liberal Democrat marginal seat than to anything to do with the debate. I urge his constituents to read his comments, because they only have to do so to realise that the Conservative party's attitudes are consistent with helping people and their families, and allowing people to have the freedom to make their own decisions.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions (Mr. Keith Hill): This has been a short but interesting debate. My hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich, East (Mr. Snape) brought his usual transport expertise and panache to our proceedings.
The hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Mr. Brake) made some effective criticisms of the previous Government and ground a few of the usual Liberal Democrat axes about the current Administration.
The right hon. Member for South-West Surrey (Mrs. Bottomley) raised a specific issue, on the A3 through Hindhead. I appreciate that that has been a serious problem for many years—including the Conservative years, when she was a Secretary of State. It is tempting to ask her what she did about it then.

Mrs. Virginia Bottomley: Will the Minister give way?

Mr. Hill: No. The right hon. Lady has had her opportunity to speak, and I am responding to her speech. [HON. MEMBERS: "Give way."] I am responding to her speech.
The roads-based study into whether the environmental and economic benefits of the preferred scheme can be delivered by a contribution from charges on road users is on-programme to report by the end of 2000. It is inappropriate for Ministers to comment further on the way forward for the preferred scheme until the report of the study and the advice of the regional planning body is received by the Secretary of State.

Miss Anne McIntosh: Will the Minister give way?

Mr. Hill: I am afraid that I just do not have time. The hon. Lady has also not been in the Chamber for most of the proceedings, and I am responding to specific questions asked by those who took the trouble to stay in the Chamber and participate in the debate.

Miss McIntosh: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I simply wish to set the record straight. I was here until 9.10 pm and sat through the whole debate, except for 20 minutes.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael Lord): That is not a matter for the occupant of the Chair.

Mr. Hill: My hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody) asked when a separate rail safety company will be established. The answer is autumn 2000. The Health and Safety Executive and the rail regulator have to go to consultation. The Rail Regulator's consultation will begin next week, and the Health and Safety Executive's consultation started last week. I hope that that is helpful to my hon. Friend.

Miss McIntosh: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Hill: I will.

Miss McIntosh: I thank the hon. Gentleman for his incredible generosity. On the roads issue, is he not embarrassed that, today, the British Road Federation said that the Government would have to spend more than 80 per cent. more than their projected spending to keep up with the rest of the Europe?

Mr. Hill: I am extremely grateful to the hon. Lady for mentioning the British Road Federation. If I have time, I intend to deal precisely with its proposals, and the effect of those proposals on the Opposition's transport policy.
We had a long speech from the right hon. Member for North-West Cambridgeshire (Sir B. Mawhinney). Although I am grateful for his flattering remarks—who would not be?—I thought his speech smacked a little of self-exculpation. It was he who, as Secretary of State, broke the growing consensus in favour of congestion charging that had developed under his predecessors and was continued by his successor, the now shadow Leader of the House. Alas, that consensus has now been broken by Opposition spokesmen, for entirely opportunistic reasons.
The right hon. Member for North-West Cambridgeshire asked me many questions. I do not have time to answer them all, but I shall summarise the answers to his most important questions. First, the purpose of congestion charging is traffic reduction, in the interests of the economy, the environment and public health.
Secondly, of course the Government—like the previous Government—have conducted studies on the level of congestion charges and their likely effects on traffic. The latest one was the road congestion charging in London study, focusing on central London, which the right hon. Gentleman can consult in the Library.
Thirdly, of course congestion charging is not a form of taxation. The Government have made it clear that the proceeds of charges will be ring-fenced for local transport investment and that there will be no cuts in Government financial support for local transport authorities.
Finally, I find it absurd of the right hon. Gentleman to accuse the Government of hating the motorist. That comes from a Tory former Secretary of State for Transport and a leading member of a Government who brought in the automatic fuel duty escalator and increased fuel tax from 7p to 42p a litre. What could be more anti-car than that? The Conservative Government invented road congestion. They started with 70 cars per mile, spent £70 billion on new roads and ended up with 100 cars per mile. That is not success; it is congestion. What could be more anti-car than that? The Conservatives cut road maintenance by 9 per cent. over four years and left Britain's motorway and trunk road network in its worst state of maintenance since records began. What could be more anti-car than that?
In 1997, we inherited a crumbling transport system that failed to provide real choice, with poorly maintained and congested roads, cowboy bus services and a fragmented, stunted rail system that lacked strategic management and direction. We inherited an endangered environment and a contempt for the concept of transport integration. The Conservative legacy was no plans, no purpose and a lack of investment because of boom-bust economic incompetence. That boom-bust incompetence led in one year, between 1992 and 1993, to a massive 25 per cent. cut in core investment in London Underground—the largest single cut in any line of Government expenditure in the 1990s. That was typical of the Tories' irresponsible approach to investment in transport. It takes years to deliver major projects and real improvements to passengers, drivers, pedestrians and cyclists. We are still suffering from that legacy of neglect.
We have heard many alleged statistics on transport spending. Let me remind the House of the real facts. There is no disputing the fact that, under the previous Government, expenditure on transport was set to fall. In their last published plans, set out clearly in the Conservative Government's transport report 1997, forecast total transport spending was scheduled to fall from £5.2 billion in 1997–98 to £4.3 billion in 1999–2000—a planned cut of £1 billion over three years. These are the real facts.
Following the comprehensive spending review, we announced an extra £1.8 billion for local and public transport and road maintenance. That included £700 million more for local authorities' local transport plans and to restore cuts in the maintenance of their principal roads; more than £400 million extra for new spending on the trunk road and motorway network, with priority given to the maintenance of the existing trunk road network, and to making better use of it; more than £300 million extra for new investment in the railway industry, including extra support for the channel tunnel rail link, on top of the annual subsidy of more than £1 billion to rail operators for existing rail franchise contracts; and £300 million more for local bus services.
That is not all. Since then, we have announced a further £517 million to modernise the London underground, a £755 million local transport plan settlement for 2000–01,


with more than £1 billion extra to come next year, and an extra £280 million for transport in this year's Budget statement.
As a result of that extra cash, in 1999–2000, more than an extra £1 billion was spent on transport than was planned by the previous Administration for the same year: £5.3 billion against a previously planned £4.3 billion. That is a fact. If I might say so, it is not a killer fact, but a living, breathing, joyous fact of which the Government are proud. It is an extra £1 billion more than was planned by the Conservatives.
Of course, that is only part of the story of growth in investment in transport in the Labour years. Because we believe in partnership—and because the private sector believes in our commitment to stability and growth in transport investment—we have given encouragement to the private companies in public transport to invest massively in better services for the travelling public. There has been a 50 per cent. growth in private sector spending on transport between 1997 and 2000 from £2.6 billion to £4.2 billion and a further 50 per cent. increase to £6.2 billion is projected over the next two years. These are the facts—the real facts.
Against this impressive record of commitment to the nation's transport system, what is the Tory alternative? What is on offer from the commonsense revolution? For enlightenment, I turn to that seminal document, "Bringing Common Sense to Your Local Council" with its "Five Key Pledges". I seem to have heard of that one before—highly original.
What is the key pledge on transport? It is No. 3—"no new taxes". That is also highly original. What do we find among the Tory promises? First, "Much better public transport"—but no new taxes. Then there are
New park and ride schemes,
but no new taxes.
More secure and cheaper parking places,
but no new taxes.
New roads where they are needed,
but no new taxes. More bypasses, but no new taxes. More road-widening and improvements, but no new taxes. Last but not least, "Better road surfaces" but, of course, no new taxes.
Is it just me, or is there a problem here? Isn't there just a small problem of where the money is coming from? Even if the shadow Transport Minister, the hon. Member for North Essex (Mr. Jenkin), cannot see it, I rather suspect that his trusty sidekick, the hon. Member for Poole (Mr. Syms), can. After all, on 13 April, he launched the Conservative roads consultation programme. The news release was headed:
Conservatives show the road ahead
—another original title.
At that launch, the hon. Member for Poole declared:
Today I am asking everyone who has to use the road to write to me and tell me what are the worst roads in the north-east.
Why the north-east only, and how many actually wrote to the hon. Gentleman, are fascinating moot points. He continued:
I want to hear about the roads that need widening, badly maintained roads and clogged towns and villages that need a bypass. This will allow the next Conservative Government to put together a roads programme that addresses the real needs of the travelling public.

The hon. Gentleman goes on to quote with approval the British Roads Federation which, he says, has claimed
that the Government will need to spend an additional £4 billion per year on maintaining and improving our road network to deliver a transport system that will rival the best in Europe.
So now we know that the Opposition are committed to spending £4 billion a year extra on the roads—but no new taxes. Frankly, the sums just do not add up. They do not make sense—not even common sense. There is no way the Tories will succeed in foisting their ill-conceived and half-baked transport plans on the British public.

Mr. James Arbuthnot: rose in his place and claimed to move, That the Question be now put.

Question, That the Question be now put, put and agreed to.

Question put accordingly, That the original words stand part of the Question:—

The House divided: Ayes 130, Noes 349.

Division No. 207]
[9.59 pm


AYES


Amess, David
Greenway, John


Ancram, Rt Hon Michael
Grieve, Dominic


Arbuthnot, Rt Hon James
Gummer, Rt Hon John


Atkinson, David (Bour'mth E)
Hague, Rt Hon William


Atkinson, Peter (Hexham)
Hamilton, Rt Hon Sir Archie


Baldry, Tony
Hammond, Philip


Bercow, John
Hawkins, Nick


Blunt, Crispin
Hayes, John


Boswell, Tim
Heald, Oliver


Bottomley, Peter (Worthing W)
Hogg, Rt Hon Douglas


Bottomley, Rt Hon Mrs Virginia
Horam, John


Brady, Graham
Howard, Rt Hon Michael


Brazier, Julian
Hunter, Andrew


Brooke, Rt Hon Peter
Jack, Rt Hon Michael


Browning, Mrs Angela
Jackson, Robert (Wantage)


Burns, Simon
Jenkin, Bernard


Cash, William
Key, Robert


Chapman, Sir Sydney (Chipping Barnet)
King, Rt Hon Tom (Bridgwater)



Kirkbride, Miss Julie


Clappison, James
Lait, Mrs Jacqui


Clark, Dr Michael (Rayleigh)
Lansley, Andrew


Clarke, Rt Hon Kenneth (Rushcliffe)
Letwin, Oliver



Lewis, Dr Julian (New Forest E)


Clifton-Brown, Geoffrey
Lidington, David


Collins, Tim
Lloyd, Rt Hon Sir Peter (Fareham)


Cormack, Sir Patrick
Loughton, Tim


Cran, James
Luff, Peter


Curry, Rt Hon David
Lyell, Rt Hon Sir Nicholas


Davis, Rt Hon David (Haltemprice)
MacGregor, Rt Hon John


Day, Stephen
McIntosh, Miss Anne


Dorrell, Rt Hon Stephen
MacKay, Rt Hon Andrew


Duncan Smith, Iain
Maclean, Rt Hon David


Emery, Rt Hon Sir Peter
McLoughlin, Patrick


Evans, Nigel
Madel, Sir David


Faber, David
Major, Rt Hon John


Fallon, Michael
Maples, John


Flight, Howard
Mates, Michael


Forth, Rt Hon Eric
Maude, Rt Hon Francis


Fox, Dr Liam
Mawhinney, Rt Hon Sir Brian


Fraser, Christopher
Moss, Malcolm


Gale, Roger
Nicholls, Patrick


Garnier, Edward
Norman, Archie


Gibb, Nick
O'Brien, Stephen (Eddisbury)


Gill, Christopher
Ottaway, Richard


Gorman, Mrs Teresa
Paice, James


Gray, James
Paterson, Owen


Green, Damian
Pickles, Eric






Portillo, Rt Hon Michael
Taylor, John M (Solihull)


Prior, David
Taylor, Sir Teddy


Redwood, Rt Hon John
Tredinnick, David


Robathan, Andrew
Trend, Michael


Robertson, Laurence
Tyrie, Andrew


Roe, Mrs Marion (Broxbourne)
Viggers, Peter


Ruffley, David
Walter, Robert


St Aubyn, Nick
Waterson, Nigel


shephard, Rt Hon Mrs Gillian
Wells, Bowen


Shepherd, Richard
Whitney, Sir Raymond


Simpson, Keith (Mid-Norfolk)
Whittingdale, John


Soames, Nicholas
Widdecombe, Rt Hon Miss Ann


Spelman, Mrs Caroline
Wilkinson, John


Spicer, Sir Michael
Wilshire, David


Spring, Richard
Winterton, Mrs Ann (Congleton)


Stanley, Rt Hon Sir John
Winterton, Nicholas (Macclesfield)


Steen, Anthony
Young, Rt Hon Sir George


Streeter, Gary



Swayne, Desmond
Tellers for the Ayes:


Syms, Robert
Mr. John Randall and


Tapsell, Sir Peter
Mrs. Eleanor Laing.


NOES


Ainger, Nick
Campbell, Ronnie (Blyth V)


Alexander, Douglas
Campbell-Savours, Dale


Allan, Richard
Cann, Jamie


Allen, Graham
Caplin, Ivor


Anderson, Donald (Swansea E)
Casale, Roger


Anderson, Janet (Rossendale)
Caton, Martin


Armstrong, Rt Hon Ms Hilary
Chapman, Ben (Wirral S)


Ashton, Joe
Chaytor, David


Atkins, Charlotte
Chidgey, David


Austin, John
Clapham, Michael


Ballard, Jackie
Clark, Rt Hon Dr David (S Shields)


Barnes, Harry
Clarke, Charles (Norwich S)


Barron, Kevin
Clarke, Eric (Midlothian)


Bayley, Hugh
Clarke, Tony (Northampton S)


Beard, Nigel
Clelland, David


Begg, Miss Anne
Clwyd, Ann


Beith, Rt Hon A J
Cohen, Harry


Bell, Martin (Tatton)
Coleman, Iain


Bell, Stuart (Middlesbrough)
Colman, Tony


Benn, Hilary (Leeds C)
Connarty, Michael


Benn, Rt Hon Tony (Chesterfield)
Cook, Frank (Stockton N)


Bennett, Andrew F
Cooper, Yvette


Benton, Joe
Corbyn, Jeremy


Bermingham, Gerald
Corston, Jean


Berry, Roger
Cox, Tom


Best, Harold
Cranston, Ross


Blackman, Liz
Crausby, David


Blears, Ms Hazel
Cryer, Mrs Ann (Keighley)


Blizzard, Bob
Cryer, John (Hornchurch)


Blunkett, Rt Hon David
Cunningham, Rt Hon Dr Jack (Copeland)


Boateng, Rt Hon Paul



Bradley, Keith (Withington)
Curtis-Thomas, Mrs Claire


Bradley, Peter (The Wrekin)
Darvill, Keith


Bradshaw, Ben
Davey, Edward (Kingston)


Brake, Tom
Davey, Valerie (Bristol W)


Brand, Dr Peter
Davidson, Ian


Breed, Colin
Davies, Rt Hon Denzil (Llanelli)


Brinton, Mrs Helen
Davies, Geraint (Croydon C)


Brown, Rt Hon Nick (Newcastle E)
Denham, John


Brown, Russell (Dumfries)
Dismore, Andrew


Browne, Desmond
Dobbin, Jim


Bruce, Malcolm (Gordon)
Dobson, Rt Hon Frank


Buck, Ms Karen
Donohoe, Brian H


Burden, Richard
Doran, Frank


Burgon, Colin
Dowd, Jim


Burnett, John
Dunwoody, Mrs Gwyneth


Burstow, Paul
Eagle, Angela (Wallasey)


Butler, Mrs Christine
Eagle, Maria (L'pool Garston)


Byers, Rt Hon Stephen
Edwards, Huw


Caborn, Rt Hon Richard
Efford, Clive


Campbell, Mrs Anne (C'bridge)
Ellman, Mrs Louise


Campbell, Rt Hon Menzies (NE Fife)
Ennis, Jeff



Etherington, Bill





Fearn, Ronnie
Khabra, Piara S


Field, Rt Hon Frank
Kidney, David


Fisher, Mark
Kilfoyle, Peter


Fitzpatrick, Jim
King, Andy (Rugby & Kenilworth)


Fitzsimons, Mrs Lorna
Kirkwood, Archy


Flint, Caroline
Kumar, Dr Ashok


Flynn, Paul
Lawrence, Mrs Jackie


Foster, Rt Hon Derek
Laxton, Bob


Foster, Michael Jabez (Hastings)
Lepper, David


Foster, Michael J (Worcester)
Levitt, Tom


Fyfe, Maria
Lloyd, Tony (Manchester C)


Gapes, Mike
Llwyd, Elfyn


Gardiner, Barry
Lock, David


George, Andrew (St Ives)
McAvoy, Thomas


George, Bruce (Walsall S)
McCabe, Steve


Gerrard, Neil
McCafferty, Ms Chris


Gibson, Dr Ian
McCartney, Rt Hon Ian (Makerfield)


Gidley, Sandra



Gilroy, Mrs Linda
Macdonald, Calum


Godman, Dr Norman A
McDonnell, John


Godsiff, Roger
McFall, John


Goggins, Paul
McGuire, Mrs Anne


Gordon, Mrs Eileen
McIsaac, Shona


Griffiths, Jane (Reading E)
Mackinlay, Andrew


Griffiths, Nigel (Edinburgh S)
Maclennan, Rt Hon Robert


Griffiths, Win (Bridgend)
McNamara, Kevin


Grocott, Bruce
McNulty, Tony


Grogan, John
MacShane, Denis


Hain, Peter
Mactaggart, Fiona


Hall, Mike (Weaver Vale)
McWalter, Tony


Hall, Patrick (Bedford)
Mahon, Mrs Alice


Hamilton, Fabian (Leeds NE)
Mallaber, Judy


Hancock, Mike
Marsden, Gordon (Blackpool S)


Hanson, David
Marsden, Paul (Shrewsbury)


Harman, Rt Hon Ms Harriet
Marshall, David (Shettleston)


Harris, Dr Evan
Marshall, Jim (Leicester S)


Harvey, Nick
Marshall-Andrews, Robert


Heal, Mrs Sylvia
Martlew, Eric


Healey, John
Maxton, John


Heath, David (Somerton & Frome)
Meacher, Rt Hon Michael


Henderson, Doug (Newcastle N)
Meale, Alan


Henderson, Ivan (Harwich)
Merron, Gillian


Hepburn, Stephen
Michael, Rt Hon Alun


Heppell, John
Michie, Bill (Shef'ld Heeley)


Hesford, Stephen
Michie, Mrs Ray (Argyll & Bute)


Hewitt, Ms Patricia
Milburn, Rt Hon Alan


Hill, Keith
Mitchell, Austin


Hinchliffe, David
Moffatt, Laura


Hoey, Kate
Moonie, Dr Lewis


Hood, Jimmy
Morgan, Ms Julie (Cardiff N)


Hoon, Rt Hon Geoffrey
Morley, Elliot


Hope, Phil
Morris, Rt Hon Ms Estelle (B' ham Yardley)


Hopkins, Kelvin



Hoyle, Lindsay
Morris, Rt Hon Sir John (Aberavon)


Hughes, Ms Beverley (Stretford)



Humble, Mrs Joan
Mountford, Kali


Hutton, John
Mowlam, Rt Hon Marjorie


Iddon, Dr Brian
Mullin, Chris


Illsley, Eric
Murphy, Denis (Wansbeck)


Jackson, Helen (Hillsborough)
Murphy, Jim (Eastwood)


Jamieson, David
Murphy, Rt Hon Paul (Torfaen)


Jenkins, Brian
Naysmith, Dr Doug


Johnson, Alan (Hull W & Hessle)
Norris, Dan


Johnson, Miss Melanie (Welwyn Hatfield)
Oaten, Mark



O'Brien, Bill (Normanton)


Jones, Rt Hon Barry (Alyn)
O'Brien, Mike (N Warks)


Jones, Mrs Fiona (Newark)
O'Hara, Eddie


Jones, Helen (Warrington N)
Olner, Bill


Jones, Ms Jenny (Wolverh'ton SW)
O'Neill, Martin



Öpik, Lembit


Jones, Jon Owen (Cardiff C)
Organ, Mrs Diana


Jowell, Rt Hon Ms Tessa
Palmer, Dr Nick


Kaufman, Rt Hon Gerald
Pearson, Ian


Keen, Alan (Feltham & Heston)
Pendry, Tom


Keen, Ann (Brentford & Isleworth)
Perham, Ms Linda


Keetch, Paul
Pickthall, Colin






Pike, Peter L
Stevenson, George


Plaskitt, James
Stewart, Ian (Eccles)


Pollard, Kerry
Stinchcombe, Paul


Pond, Chris
Stoate, Dr Howard


Pope, Greg
Stuart, Ms Gisela


Pound, Stephen
Stunell, Andrew


Prentice, Ms Bridget (Lewisham E)
Sutcliffe, Gerry


Prentice, Gordon (Pendle)
Taylor, Rt Hon Mrs Ann (Dewsbury)


Prescott, Rt Hon John



Primarolo, Dawn
Taylor, David (NW Leics)


Prosser, Gwyn
Taylor, Matthew (Truro)


Quin, Rt Hon Ms Joyce
Temple-Morris, Peter


Quinn, Lawrie
Thomas, Gareth (Clwyd W)


Radice, Rt Hon Giles
Thomas, Gareth R (Harrow W)


Rammell, Bill
Thomas, Simon (Ceredigion)


Rapson, Syd
Timms, Stephen


Raynsford, Nick
Tipping, Paddy


Reid, Rt Hon Dr John (Hamilton N)
Todd, Mark


Rendel, David
Tonge, Dr Jenny


Rooker, Rt Hon Jeff
Touhig, Don


Rooney, Terry
Truswell, Paul


Ross, Ernie (Dundee W)
Turner, Dennis (Wolverh'ton SE)


Rowlands, Ted
Turner, Dr Desmond (Kemptown)


Roy, Frank
Turner, Dr George (NW Norfolk)


Ruane, Chris
Turner, Neil (Wigan)


Ruddock, Joan
Twigg, Derek (Halton)


Russell, Bob (Colchester)
Tyler, Paul


Russell, Ms Christine (Chester)
Tynan, Bill


Salter, Martin
Vis, Dr Rudi


Sanders, Adrian
Ward, Ms Claire


Sarwar, Mohammad
Wareing, Robert N


Savidge, Malcolm
Watts, David


Sedgemore, Brian
Whitehead, Dr Alan


Shaw, Jonathan
Wicks, Malcolm


Sheerman, Barry
Williams, Rt Hon Alan (Swansea W)


Shipley, Ms Debra



Short, Rt Hon Clare
Williams, Alan W (E Carmarthen)


Simpson, Alan (Nottingham S)
Willis, Phil


Skinner, Dennis
Wills, Michael


Smith, Rt Hon Andrew (Oxford E)
Winnick, David


Smith, Angela (Basildon)
Winterton, Ms Rosie (Doncaster C)


Smith, Miss Geraldine (Morecambe & Lunesdale)
Wood, Mike



Woolas, Phil


Smith, Jacqui (Redditch)
Worthington, Tony


Smith, Llew (Blaenau Gwent)
Wray, James


Smith, Sir Robert (W Ab'd'ns)
Wright, Anthony D (Gt Yarmouth)


Snape, Peter
Wright, Dr Tony (Cannock)


Soley, Clive
Wyatt, Derek


Southworth, Ms Helen



Spellar, John
Tellers for the Noes:


Squire, Ms Rachel
Mr. Clive Betts and


Starkey, Dr Phyllis
Mr. Robert Ainsworth.


Steinberg, Gerry

Question accordingly negatived.

Question, That the proposed words be there added, put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 31 (Questions on amendments):—

The House divided: Ayes 308, Noes 163.

Division No. 208]
[10.16 pm


AYES


Ainger, Nick
Bayley, Hugh


Alexander, Douglas
Beard, Nigel


Allen, Graham
Begg, Miss Anne


Anderson, Donald (Swansea E)
Bell, Martin (Tatton)


Anderson, Janet (Rossendale)
Bell, Stuart (Middlesbrough)


Armstrong, Rt Hon Ms Hilary
Benn, Hilary (Leeds C)


Atkins, Charlotte
Benn, Rt Hon Tony (Chesterfield)


Austin, John
Bennett, Andrew F


Barnes, Harry
Benton, Joe


Barron, Kevin
Bermingham, Gerald





Berry, Roger
Foster, Michael Jabez (Hastings)


Best, Harold



Blackman, Liz
Foster, Michael J (Worcester)


Blears, Ms Hazel
Fyfe, Maria


Blizzard, Bob
Gapes, Mike


Boateng, Rt Hon Paul
Gardiner, Barry


Bradley, Keith (Withington)
George, Bruce (Walsall S)


Bradley, Peter (The Wrekin)
Gerrard, Neil


Bradshaw, Ben
Gibson, Dr Ian


Brinton, Mrs Helen
Gilroy, Mrs Linda


Brown, Rt Hon Nick (Newcastle E)
Godman, Dr Norman A


Brown, Russell (Dumfries)
Godsiff, Roger


Browne, Desmond
Goggins, Paul


Buck, Ms Karen
Gordon, Mrs Eileen


Burden, Richard
Griffiths, Jane (Reading E)


Burgon, Cohn
Griffiths, Nigel (Edinburgh S)


Butler, Mrs Christine
Griffiths, Win (Bridgend)


Byers, Rt Hon Stephen
Grocott, Bruce


Caborn, Rt Hon Richard
Grogan, John


Campbell, Mrs Anne (C'bridge)
Hain, Peter


Campbell, Ronnie (Blyth V)
Hall, Mike (Weaver Vale)


Cann, Jamie
Hall, Patrick (Bedford)


Caplin, Ivor
Hamilton, Fabian (Leeds NE)


Casale, Roger
Hanson, David


Caton, Martin
Harman, Rt Hon Ms Harriet


Chapman, Ben (Wirral S)
Heal, Mrs Sylvia


Chaytor, David
Healey, John


Clapham, Michael
Henderson, Doug (Newcastle N)


Clark, Rt Hon Dr David (S Shields)
Henderson, Ivan (Harwich)


Clarke, Charles (Norwich S)
Hepburn, Stephen


Clarke, Eric (Midlothian)
Heppell, John


Clarke, Tony (Northampton S)
Hesford, Stephen


Clelland, David
Hewitt, Ms Patricia


Clwyd, Ann
Hill, Keith


Cohen, Harry
Hinchliffe, David


Coleman, Iain
Hoey, Kate


Colman, Tony
Hood, Jimmy


Connarty, Michael
Hoon, Rt Hon Geoffrey


Cook, Frank (Stockton N)
Hope, Phil


Cooper, Yvette
Hopkins, Kelvin


Corbyn, Jeremy
Hoyle, Lindsay


Corston, Jean
Hughes, Ms Beverley (Stretford)


Cox, Tom
Humble, Mrs Joan


Cranston, Ross
Hutton, John


Crausby, David
Iddon, Dr Brian


Cryer, Mrs Ann (Keighley)
Illsley, Eric


Cryer, John (Hornchurch)
Jackson, Helen (Hillsborough)


Cunningham, Rt Hon Dr Jack (Copeland)
Jamieson, David



Jenkins, Brian


Curtis-Thomas, Mrs Claire
Johnson, Alan (Hull W & Hessle)


Darvill, Keith
Johnson, Miss Melanie (Welwyn Hatfield)


Davey, Valerie (Bristol W)



Davidson, Ian
Jones, Rt Hon Barry (Alyn)


Davies, Rt Hon Denzil (Llanelli)
Jones, Mrs Fiona (Newark)


Davies, Geraint (Croydon C)
Jones, Helen (Warrington N)


Denham, John
Jones, Ms Jenny (Wolverh'ton SW)


Dismore, Andrew



Dobbin, Jim
Jones, Jon Owen (Cardiff C)


Dobson, Rt Hon Frank
Jowell, Rt Hon Ms Tessa


Donohoe, Brian H
Kaufman, Rt Hon Gerald


Doran, Frank
Keen, Alan (Feltham & Heston)


Dowd, Jim
Keen, Ann (Brentford & Isleworth)


Eagle, Angela (Wallasey)
Khabra, Piara S


Eagle, Maria (L'pool Garston)
Kidney, David


Edwards, Huw
Kilfoyle, Peter


Efford, Clive
King, Andy (Rugby & Kenilworth)


Ellman, Mrs Louise
Kumar, Dr Ashok


Ennis, Jeff
Lawrence, Mrs Jackie


Etherington, Bill
Laxton, Bob


Field, Rt Hon Frank
Lepper, David


Fisher, Mark
Levitt, Tom


Fitzpatrick, Jim
Lloyd, Tony (Manchester C)


Fitzsimons, Mrs Lorna
Lock, David


Flint, Caroline
McAvoy, Thomas


Flynn, Paul
McCabe, Steve


Foster, Rt Hon Derek
McCafferty, Ms Chris






McCartney, Rt Hon Ian (Makerfield)
Rooney, Terry



Ross, Ernie (Dundee W)


Macdonald, Calum
Rowlands, Ted


McDonnell, John
Roy, Frank


McFall, John
Ruane, Chris


McGuire, Mrs Anne
Ruddock, Joan


McIsaac, Shona
Russell, Ms Christine (Chester)


Mackinlay, Andrew
Salter, Martin


McNamara, Kevin
Sarwar, Mohammad


McNulty, Tony
Savidge, Malcolm


MacShane, Denis
Sedgemore, Brian


Mactaggart, Fiona
Shaw, Jonathan


McWalter, Tony
Sheerman, Barry


Mahon, Mrs Alice
Shipley, Ms Debra


Mallaber, Judy
Short, Rt Hon Clare


Marsden, Gordon (Blackpool S)
Simpson, Alan (Nottingham S)


Marsden, Paul (Shrewsbury)
Skinner, Dennis


Marshall, David (Shettleston)
Smith, Rt Hon Andrew (Oxford E)


Marshall, Jim (Leicester S)
Smith, Angela (Basildon)


Marshall-Andrews, Robert
Smith, Miss Geraldine (Morecambe & Lunesdale)


Martlew, Eric



Maxton, John
Smith, Jacqui (Redditch)


Meacher, Rt Hon Michael
Smith, Llew (Blaenau Gwent)


Meale, Alan
Snape, Peter


Merron, Gillian
Soley, Clive


Michael, Rt Hon Alun
Southworth, Ms Helen


Michie, Bill (Shef'ld Heeley)
Spellar, John


Milburn, Rt Hon Alan
Squire, Ms Rachel


Mitchell, Austin
Starkey, Dr Phyllis


Moffatt, Laura
Steinberg, Gerry


Moonie, Dr Lewis
Stevenson, George


Morgan, Ms Julie (Cardiff N)
Stewart, Ian (Eccles)


Morley, Elliot
Stinchcombe, Paul


Morris, Rt Hon Ms Estelle (B'ham Yardley)
Stoate, Dr Howard



Stuart, Ms Gisela


Morris, Rt Hon Sir John (Aberavon)
Sutcliffe, Gerry



Taylor, Rt Hon Mrs Ann (Dewsbury)


Mountford, Kali



Mowlam, Rt Hon Marjorie
Taylor, David (NW Leics)


Mullin, Chris
Temple-Morris, Peter


Murphy, Denis (Wansbeck)
Thomas, Gareth (Clwyd W)


Murphy, Jim (Eastwood)
Thomas, Gareth R (Harrow W)


Murphy, Rt Hon Paul (Torfaen)
Timms, Stephen


Naysmith, Dr Doug
Tipping, Paddy


Norris, Dan
Todd, Mark


O'Brien, Bill (Normanton)
Touhig, Don


O'Brien, Mike (N Warks)
Truswell, Paul


O'Hara, Eddie
Turner, Dr Desmond (Kemptown)


Olner, Bill
Turner, Dr George (NW Norfolk)


O'Neill, Martin
Turner, Neil (Wigan)


Organ, Mrs Diana
Twigg, Derek (Halton)


Palmer, Dr Nick
Tynan, Bill


Pearson, Ian
Vis, Dr Rudi


Pendry, Tom
Ward, Ms Claire


Perham, Ms Linda
Wareing, Robert N


Pickthall, Colin
Watts, David


Pike, Peter L
Whitehead, Dr Alan


Plaskitt, James
Wicks, Malcolm


Pollard, Kerry
Williams, Rt Hon Alan (Swansea W)


Pond, Chris



Pope, Greg
Williams, Alan W (E Carmarthen)


Pound, Stephen
Wills, Michael


Prentice, Ms Bridget (Lewisham E)
Winnick, David


Prentice, Gordon (Pendle)
Winterton, Ms Rosie (Doncaster C)


Prescott, Rt Hon John
Wood, Mike


Primarolo, Dawn
Woolas, Phil


Prosser, Gwyn
Worthington, Tony


Quin, Rt Hon Ms Joyce
Wray, James


Quinn, Lawrie
Wright, Anthony D (Gt Yarmouth)


Radice, Rt Hon Giles
Wright, Dr Tony (Cannock)


Rammell, Bill
Wyatt, Derek


Rapson, Syd



Raynsford, Nick
Tellers for the Ayes:


Reid, Rt Hon Dr John (Hamilton N)
Mr. Clive Betts and


Rooker, Rt Hon Jeff
Mr. Robert Ainsworth.





NOES


Allan, Richard
Howard, Rt Hon Michael


Amess, David
Hunter, Andrew


Ancram, Rt Hon Michael
Jack, Rt Hon Michael


Arbuthnot, Rt Hon James
Jackson, Robert (Wantage)


Atkinson, David (Bour'mth E)
Jenkin, Bernard


Atkinson, Peter (Hexham)
Keetch, Paul


Baldry, Tony
Key, Robert


Ballard, Jackie
King, Rt Hon Tom (Bridgwater)


Beith, Rt Hon A J
Kirkbride, Miss Julie


Bercow, John
Kirkwood, Archy


Blunt, Crispin
Laing, Mrs Eleanor


Boswell, Tim
Lait, Mrs Jacqui


Bottomley, Peter (Worthing W)
Lansley, Andrew


Bottomley, Rt Hon Mrs Virginia
Leigh, Edward


Brady, Graham
Letwin, Oliver


Brake, Tom
Lewis, Dr Julian (New Forest E)


Brand, Dr Peter
Lidington, David


Brazier, Julian
Lloyd, Rt Hon Sir Peter (Fareham)


Breed, Colin
Llwyd, Elfyn


Brooke, Rt Hon Peter
Loughton, Tim


Browning, Mrs Angela
Luff, Peter


Bruce, Malcolm (Gordon)
Lyell, Rt Hon Sir Nicholas


Burnett, John
MacGregor, Rt Hon John


Burns, Simon
McIntosh, Miss Anne


Burstow, Paul
MacKay, Rt Hon Andrew


Butterfill, John
Maclean, Rt Hon David


Campbell, Rt Hon Menzies (NE Fife)
Maclennan, Rt Hon Robert



McLoughlin, Patrick


Cash, William
Madel, Sir David


Chapman, Sir Sydney (Chipping Barnet)
Major, Rt Hon John



Maples, John


Chidgey, David
Mates, Michael


Clappison, James
Maude, Rt Hon Francis


Clark, Dr Michael (Rayleigh)
Mawhinney, Rt Hon Sir Brian


Clarke, Rt Hon Kenneth (Rushcliffe)
Michie, Mrs Ray (Argyll & Bute)



Moss, Malcolm


Collins, Tim
Nicholls, Patrick


Cormack, Sir Patrick
Norman, Archie


Cran, James
Oaten, Mark


Curry, Rt Hon David
O'Brien, Stephen (Eddisbury)


Davey, Edward (Kingston)
Öpik, Lembit


Davis, Rt Hon David (Haltemprice)
Ottaway, Richard


Day, Stephen
Paice, James


Dorrell, Rt Hon Stephen
Paterson, Owen


Duncan Smith, Iain
Pickles, Eric


Emery, Rt Hon Sir Peter
Portillo, Rt Hon Michael


Evans, Nigel
Prior, David


Faber, David
Redwood, Rt Hon John


Fallon, Michael
Rendel, David


Fearn, Ronnie
Robathan, Andrew


Flight, Howard
Robertson, Laurence


Forth, Rt Hon Eric
Roe, Mrs Marion (Broxbourne)


Fraser, Christopher
Ruffley, David


Garnier, Edward
Russell, Bob (Colchester)


George, Andrew (St Ives)
Sanders, Adrian


Gibb, Nick
Shephard, Rt Hon Mrs Gillian


Gidley, Sandra
Shepherd, Richard


Gill, Christopher
Simpson, Keith (Mid-Norfolk)


Gorman, Mrs Teresa
Smith, Sir Robert (W Ab'd'ns)


Gray, James
Soames, Nicholas


Green, Damian
Spelman, Mrs Caroline


Greenway, John
Spicer, Sir Michael


Grieve, Dominic
Spring, Richard


Hague, Rt Hon William
Stanley, Rt Hon Sir John


Hamilton, Rt Hon Sir Archie
Steen, Anthony


Hammond, Philip
Streeter, Gary


Hancock, Mike
Stunell, Andrew


Harris, Dr Evan
Swayne, Desmond


Harvey, Nick
Syms, Robert


Hawkins, Nick
Taylor, John M (Solihull)


Hayes, John
Taylor, Matthew (Truro)


Heald, Oliver
Taylor, Sir Teddy


Heath, David (Somerton & Frome)
Thomas, Simon (Ceredigion)


Hogg, Rt Hon Douglas
Tonge, Dr Jenny


Horam, John
Tredinnick, David






Trend, Michael
Wilkinson, John


Tyler, Paul
Willis Phil


Tyrie, Andrew
Wilshire, David


Viggers, Peter
Winterton, Mrs Ann (Congleton)


Walter, Robert
Winterton, Nicholas (Macclesfield)


Waterson, Nigel
Young, Rt Hon Sir George


Wells, Bowen



Whitney, Sir Raymond
Tellers for the Noes:


Whittingdale, John
Mr. John Randall and


Widdecombe, Rt Hon Miss Ann
Mr. Geoffrey Clifton-Brown

Question accordingly agreed to.

MR. DEPUTY SPEAKER forthwith declared the main Question, as amended, to be agreed to.

Resolved,
That this House welcomes the fact that the Government has substantially increased spending on transport from the levels planned by the previous Government; notes that this Government ended the automatic fuel duty escalator begun by the previous Government; deplores the previous Government's record of under-investment in transport, which left an investment backlog in important areas like road maintenance, rail and London Underground; notes that under the last Government the number of cars per mile of road went up from 70 to 100, that yearly carbon dioxide emissions from road transport increased by 26 per cent. and that by May 1997 Railtrack was £700 million behind on its rail investment and maintenance programme; and welcomes the Government's approach on an integrated transport strategy which will be delivered by an integrated Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions, and its plans to increase spending and modernise the transport system further through its Ten Year Plan for transport investment.

Mr. Eric Forth: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. The next item that we are due to consider is a consolidation Bill, under Standing Order No. 58. That, in turn, rests on Standing Order No. 140(3), which states that such Bills are considered by some mysterious Committee that apparently must have a quorum of two. Are you satisfied that such a Committee will provide the House with sufficient protection? It appears that we are confronted, on a take-it-or-leave-it basis, with a Bill that could be significant or complicated, but which may be considered by a Committee that is quorate with only two Members. Are you satisfied that that is in order?

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael Lord): It is not my responsibility to comment on such Standing Orders; it is my duty to ensure that they are correctly applied.

POWERS OF CRIMINAL COURTS (SENTENCING) BILL [LORDS]

Order for Second Reading read

Motion made and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 58 (Consolidation Bills), That the Bill be now read a Second Time.—[Mr. Clelland.]

The House divided: Ayes 325, Noes 6.

Division No. 209]
[10.32 pm


AYES


Ainger, Nick
Anderson, Janet (Rossendale)


Ainsworth, Robert (Cov'try NE)
Armstrong, Rt Hon Ms Hilary


Alexander, Douglas
Atkins, Charlotte


Allan, Richard
Austin, John


Allen, Graham
Ballard, Jackie


Anderson, Donald (Swansea E)
Barnes, Harry





Barron, Kevin
Doran, Frank


Bayley, Hugh
Dowd, Jim


Beard, Nigel
Eagle, Angela (Wallasey)


Begg, Miss Anne
Eagle, Maria (L'pool Garston)


Beith, Rt Hon A J
Edwards, Huw


Benn, Hilary (Leeds C)
Efford, Clive


Benn, Rt Hon Tony (Chesterfield)
Ellman, Mrs Louise


Benton, Joe
Ennis, Jeff


Bermingham, Gerald
Etherington, Bill


Berry, Roger
Fearn, Ronnie


Best, Harold
Field, Rt Hon Frank


Blackman, Liz
Fisher, Mark


Blears, Ms Hazel
Fitzpatrick, Jim


Blizzard, Bob
Fitzsimons, Mrs Lorna


Boateng, Rt Hon Paul
Flint, Caroline


Bradley, Keith (Withington)
Flynn, Paul


Bradley, Peter (The Wrekin)
Foster, Rt Hon Derek


Bradshaw, Ben
Foster, Michael Jabez (Hastings)


Brake, Tom
Foster, Michael J (Worcester)


Brand, Dr Peter
Fyfe, Maria


Brinton, Mrs Helen
Gapes, Mike


Brown, Rt Hon Nick (Newcastle E)
Gardiner, Barry


Brown, Russell (Dumfries)
George, Andrew (St Ives)


Browne, Desmond
George, Bruce (Walsall S)


Bruce, Malcolm (Gordon)
Gerrard, Neil


Buck, Ms Karen
Gibson, Dr Ian


Burden, Richard
Gidley, Sandra


Burgon, Colin
Gilroy, Mrs Linda


Burnett, John
Godman, Dr Norman A


Burstow, Paul
Godsiff, Roger


Butler, Mrs Christine
Goggins, Paul


Byers, Rt Hon Stephen
Gordon, Mrs Eileen


Caborn, Rt Hon Richard
Griffiths, Jane (Reading E)


Campbell, Mrs Anne (C'bridge)
Griffiths, Nigel (Edinburgh S)


Campbell, Rt Hon Menzies (NE Fife)
Griffiths, Win (Bridgend)



Grocott, Bruce


Campbell-Savours, Dale
Grogan, John


Cann, Jamie
Hain, Peter


Caplin, Ivor
Hall, Patrick (Bedford)


Casale, Roger
Hamilton, Fabian (Leeds NE)


Caton, Martin
Hancock, Mike


Chapman, Ben (Wirral S)
Hanson, David


Chaytor, David
Harman, Rt Hon Ms Harriet


Clapham, Michael
Heal, Mrs Sylvia


Clark, Rt Hon Dr David (S Shields)
Healey, John


Clarke, Charles (Norwich S)
Heath, David (Somerton & Frome)


Clarke, Eric (Midlothian)
Henderson, Doug (Newcastle N)


Clarke, Tony (Northampton S)
Henderson, Ivan (Harwich)


Clelland, David
Hepburn, Stephen


Clwyd, Ann
Heppell, John


Cohen, Harry
Hesford, Stephen


Coleman, Iain
Hewitt, Ms Patricia


Colman, Tony
Hinchliffe, David


Connarty, Michael
Hoey, Kate


Cook, Frank (Stockton N)
Hood, Jimmy


Cooper, Yvette
Hoon, Rt Hon Geoffrey


Corbyn, Jeremy
Hope, Phil


Corston, Jean
Hopkins, Kelvin


Cox, Tom
Hoyle, Lindsay


Cranston, Ross
Hughes, Ms Beverley (Stretford)


Crausby, David
Humble, Mrs Joan


Cryer, Mrs Ann (Keighley)
Hutton, John


Cryer, John (Hornchurch)
Iddon, Dr Brian


Cunningham, Rt Hon Dr Jack (Copeland)
Illsley, Eric



Jackson, Helen (Hillsborough)


Curtis-Thomas, Mrs Claire
Jamieson, David


Darvill, Keith
Jenkins, Brian


Davey, Edward (Kingston)
Johnson, Alan (Hull W & Hessle)


Davey, Valerie (Bristol W)
Johnson, Miss Melanie (Welwyn Hatfield)


Davidson, Ian



Davies, Rt Hon Denzil (Llanelli)
Jones, Rt Hon Barry (Alyn)


Davies, Geraint (Croydon C)
Jones, Mrs Fiona (Newark)


Denham, John
Jones, Helen (Warrington N)


Dismore, Andrew
Jones, Ms Jenny (Wolverh'ton SW)


Dobbin, Jim



Donohoe, Brian H
Jones, Jon Owen (Cardiff C)






Jowell, Rt Hon Ms Tessa
Pollard, Kerry


Kaufman, Rt Hon Gerald
Pond, Chris


Keen, Alan (Feltham & Heston)
Pope, Greg


Keen, Ann (Brentford & Isleworth)
Pound, Stephen


Khabra, Piara S
Prentice, Ms Bridget (Lewisham E)


Kidney, David
Prentice, Gordon (Pendle)


King, Andy (Rugby & Kenilworth)
Prescott, Rt Hon John


Kirkwood, Archy
Primarolo, Dawn


Kumar, Dr Ashok
Prosser, Gwyn


Lawrence, Mrs Jackie
Quin, Rt Hon Ms Joyce


Laxton, Bob
Quinn, Lawrie


Lepper, David
Radice, Rt Hon Giles


Levitt, Tom
Rammell, Bill


Lloyd, Tony (Manchester C)
Rapson, Syd


Llwyd, Elfyn
Reid, Rt Hon Dr John (Hamilton N)


Lock, David
Rendel, David


McAvoy, Thomas
Rooker, Rt Hon Jeff


McCabe, Steve
Rooney, Terry


McCafferty, Ms Chris
Ross, Ernie (Dundee W)


McCartney, Rt Hon Ian (Makerfield)
Rowlands, Ted



Roy, Frank


Macdonald, Calum
Ruane, Chris


McDonnell, John
Ruddock, Joan


McFall, John
Russell, Bob (Colchester)


McGuire, Mrs Anne
Russell, Ms Christine (Chester)


McIsaac, Shona
Salter, Martin


Mackinlay, Andrew
Sanders, Adrian


McNamara, Kevin
Sarwar, Mohammad


McNulty, Tony
Savidge, Malcolm


MacShane, Denis
Sedgemore, Brian


Mactaggart, Fiona
Shaw, Jonathan


McWalter, Tony
Sheerman, Barry


Mahon, Mrs Alice
Shipley, Ms Debra


Mallaber, Judy
Simpson, Alan (Nottingham S)


Marsden, Gordon (Blackpool S)
Skinner, Dennis


Marsden, Paul (Shrewsbury)
Smith, Rt Hon Andrew (Oxford E)


Marshall, David (Shettleston)
Smith, Angela (Basildon)


Marshall, Jim (Leicester S)
Smith, Miss Geraldine (Morecambe & Lunesdale)


Marshall-Andrews, Robert



Martlew, Eric
Smith, Jacqui (Redditch)


Maxton, John
Smith, Llew (Blaenau Gwent)


Meacher, Rt Hon Michael
Smith, Sir Robert (W Ab'd'ns)


Meale, Alan
Snape, Peter


Merron, Gillian
Soley, Clive


Michael, Rt Hon Alun
Southworth, Ms Helen


Michie, Bill (Shef'ld Heeley)
Spellar, John


Michie, Mrs Ray (Argyll & Bute)
Squire, Ms Rachel


Milburn, Rt Hon Alan
Starkey, Dr Phyllis


Mitchell, Austin
Steinberg, Gerry


Moffatt, Laura
Stevenson, George


Moonie, Dr Lewis
Stewart, Ian (Eccles)


Morgan, Ms Julie (Cardiff N)
Stinchcombe, Paul


Morley, Elliot
Stoate, Dr Howard


Morris, Rt Hon Ms Estelle (B'ham Yardley)
Stuart, Ms Gisela



Stunell, Andrew


Mountford, Kali
Sutcliffe, Gerry


Mullin, Chris
Taylor, Rt Hon Mrs Ann (Dewsbury)


Murphy, Denis (Wansbeck)



Murphy, Jim (Eastwood)
Taylor, David (NW Leics)


Murphy, Rt Hon Paul (Torfaen)
Taylor, Matthew (Truro)


Naysmith, Dr Doug
Temple-Morris, Peter


Norris, Dan
Thomas, Gareth (Clwyd W)


Oaten, Mark
Thomas, Gareth R (Harrow W)


O'Brien, Bill (Normanton)
Thomas, Simon (Ceredigion)


O'Brien, Mike (N Warks)
Timms, Stephen


O'Hara, Eddie
Tipping, Paddy


Olner, Bill
Todd, Mark


O'Neill, Martin
Touhig, Don


Öpik, Lembit
Truswell, Paul


Organ, Mrs Diana
Turner, Dr Desmond (Kemptown)


Palmer, Dr Nick
Turner, Dr George (NW Norfolk)


Pearson, Ian
Turner, Neil (Wigan)


Perham, Ms Linda
Twigg, Derek (Halton)


Pickthall, Colin
Tyler, Paul


Pike, Peter L
Tynan, Bill


Plaskitt, James
Vis, Dr Rudi





Ward, Ms Claire
Wood, Mike


Wareing, Robert N
Woolas, Phil


Watts, David
Worthington, Tony


Whitehead, Dr Alan
Wray, James


Williams, Rt Hon Alan (Swansea W)
Wright, Anthony D (Gt Yarmouth)



Wright, Dr Tony (Cannock)


Williams, Alan W (E Carmarthen)
Wyatt, Derek


Willis, Phil



Wills, Michael
Tellers for the Ayes:


Winnick, David
Mr. Clive Betts and


Winterton, Ms Rosie (Doncaster C)
Mr. Mike Hall.


NOES


Davis, Rt Hon David (Haltemprice)
Swayne, Desmond


Nicholls, Patrick



Paterson, Owen
Tellers for the Noes:


Robertson, Laurence
Mr. Eric Forth and


Soames, Nicholas
Mr. Edward Leigh.

Question accordingly agreed to.

Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 58 (Consolidation of Bills),
That the Bill be not committed.—[Mr. Clelland.]

Question agreed to.

Read the Third time, and passed, without amendment.

DELEGATED LEGISLATION

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael Lord): With permission, I shall put together the motions relating to delegated legislation.

Hon. Members: No.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: In that case, I shall put the Questions separately.

DELEGATED LEGISLATION

Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 118(6) (Standing Committees on Delegated Legislation),

TERMS AND CONDITIONS OF EMPLOYMENT

That the draft Part-time Workers (Prevention of Less Favourable Treatment) Regulations 2000, which were laid before this House on 3rd May, be approved.—[Mr. Clelland.]

Question agreed to.

Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 118(6) (Standing Committees on Delegated Legislation),

LONDON GOVERNMENT

That the draft Greater London Authority (Miscellaneous Amendments) Order 2000, which was laid before this House on 19th April, be approved.—[Mr. Clelland.]

Question agreed to.

Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 118(6) (Standing Committees on Delegated Legislation),

CONSTITUTIONAL LAW

That the draft Scotland Act 1998 (Modification of Functions) Order 2000, which was laid before this House on 8th May, be approved.—[Mr. Clelland.]

Question agreed to.

Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 118(6) (Standing Committees on Delegated Legislation),

CONSTITUTIONAL LAW

That the draft Scotland Act 1998 (Transfer of Functions to Scottish Ministers etc.) Order 2000, which was laid before this House on 8th May, be approved.—[Mr. Clelland.]

Question agreed to.

PETITIONS

Post Offices (North-West Leicestershire)

Mr. David Taylor: As a member of a family who ran the post office in my home village for most of the last century, I am well aware of major concerns about the future of sub-post offices in communities throughout North-West Leicestershire, including those from the Meadow Lane area of Coalville and from the village of Packington. There are 822 petitioners from North-West Leicestershire who believe that sub-post offices are under threat, and could be forced to close by Government changes in the way in which state benefits are paid. The petition states:
The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons do take whatever action may be necessary to secure the future of the sub post office network in North West Leicestershire and the United Kingdom.
And the petitioners remain etc.
It is a pleasure and a privilege to present the petition to Parliament on behalf of North-West Leicestershire petitioners.

To lie upon the Table.

Public Swimming Pools

Mrs. Louise Ellman: The petition, which has been signed by approximately 2,000 people, calls for better regulation and enforcement of safety in swimming pools that are used by the public. It arises from the tragic deaths of two of my constituents, Vanessa Gregson and Tsham Kamara aged 19 and seven, at Honeycomb manor park in Cornwall on 20 May 1999. I hope that the petition results in improved safety at our swimming pools. The petition of residents of Liverpool
declares that the deaths of two Liverpool girls in a holiday swimming pool could have been prevented by a tighter regulatory framework on swimming pools and its proper enforcement.
The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urge the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions to introduce new strict regulations on swimming pools to provide for the vigorous enforcement of these laws and to establish very serious penalties for any pool owner who breaches them.
And the petitioners remain etc.

To lie upon the Table.

Gammahydroxybutyrate

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Clelland.]

Mr. Ben Chapman: I am delighted to have secured the Adjournment debate on this important subject. For some time, I have had concerns about the drug gammahydroxybutyrate, which I shall call GHB. Its use and availability represents a serious danger. It should be reclassified as a class A drug for two reasons: first, because of its possible deadly effects when used as a recreational drug, particularly if mixed with alcohol or other drugs; and secondly, because of its use as a date-rape drug.
The drug was first formulated in the 1960s by a French chemist, and was developed in the United States as a pre-surgery anaesthetic. For that reason, it was dealt with under the Medicines Act 1968, rather than the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971. It has never been licensed in the UK for medicinal purposes. Only two companies, both in Germany, are licensed to manufacture the substance in the European Union. However, it is easy to make in kitchens, garages or wherever, once the precursor chemical gammabutyrolactone is obtained.
The internet is packed with sites telling people how to mix the drug. It became more popular as a recreational drug in the 1980s. It was used by bodybuilders to promote muscle growth, and by athletes to provide a shorter recovery time between training sessions. It was also used as a sleep improver. It gained a reputation for offering a pleasant alcohol-like effect, but without a hangover. It also became known for its potent pro-sexual effects.
By the 1990s, the drug was prevalent in the night club circuit in the United States and it became widely recognised as a dangerous drug there. It was recognised as such by the American police, who believed it to be cheap, easy to make, and affording vast profits to illegal drug suppliers. Indeed, its dangers came more and more to the fore when it was popularised in the United States television programme "ER", which featured an episode with two students mixing it with alcohol. Fortunately, although they fell into a coma, on that occasion they were saved by medics.
The drug was banned in many states. It was, I am pleased to say, banned nationally by President Clinton on 18 February. He has now agreed to classify it as a schedule 1 drug, which is defined as having
a high potential for abuse and no currently accepted use in medical treatment,
yet we still regard it as a medicine. In the UK, GHB appears to be widely available on the pub and club circuit. As I have said, several internet sites detail how to make, buy and use it. Warnings are often given about the risks associated with mixing GHB with alcohol, but there are no warnings about the dangers of impurities that are often added to the illegally produced substance and can have serious side effects.
Warnings are often wrong. One site states that too high a dose can result in a "harmless coma." How devastatingly wrong such a phrase is. The drug, commonly known as liquid gold or liquid ecstasy because of its ability to produce euphoria, albeit transiently, can cause cardiac arrest and stop people breathing, especially when taken in large doses.
Reports of the effects of GHB are at least consistent, in that they mention nausea, vomiting, convulsions, coma and respiratory collapse depending on the amounts taken. With alcohol its dangers increase. Taken with a few pints it can result in coma and death. There have been many reports of deaths in the United States. So far only four deaths have been reported in the United Kingdom, but that is four deaths too many.
One of those deaths was that of a Wirral man, Ian Hignett, who was the son of constituents of mine. Ian was a 27-year-old working man with good prospects and a full life ahead of him. He was introduced to GHB by friends who believed that there was no danger in taking the substance. He was fit: he was a healthy sportsman. He worked hard during the week, and at weekends liked to unwind with friends with a few drinks and maybe visit a nightclub. He had had no connection with drugs before that night in December 1998 when he died. Like so many others, he just wanted a good innocent night out at the weekend with friends.
As reported at the subsequent inquest, Mr. Hignett and his friends had taken a quantity of GHB on top of four cans of lager and a shared bottle of Aussie white. Ian felt unwell, lapsed into unconsciousness and died choking on his own vomit. The forensic report concluded from toxicology tests that the level of GHB in conjunction with alcohol was sufficient to be responsible for his death. The official cause of death is recorded as gammahydroxybutyrate and alcohol toxicity.
Mr. Hignett's friends were luckier. Although affected by vomiting, they did not pass out. It is possible that Mr. Hignett took an impure dose, or that the quantity was greater than advertised on the canister. I am told that those are common occurrences.
When recording a verdict of misadventure, the Wirral coroner was moved to say:
This is a dreadful and unnecessary loss of life. I will invite the Home Office and Department of Health to give serious consideration to having the drug reclassified under the Misuse of Drugs Act. This is a matter of some concern.
It is certainly a matter of concern to me.
Mr. Hignett's mother, to whom I spoke yesterday, shares the view that I have just expressed. Recently, she made a similar plea in a local newspaper article.
In addition to the deaths, there have been a number of near deaths across the country. The national poisons intelligence section of the Medicines Control Agency has seen calls from London to Lancashire, and from Hull to south Wales, relating to individuals who have suffered strong after effects from taking GHB, including coma. In 1998, seven people were taken to intensive care in Bolton on the same night following the usage of GHB. In my view, the evidence is clearly mounting up. The dangers of GHB as a recreational drug are becoming clearer all the time.
I want to say something about the dangers of the drug in relation to date rape. The American experience shows that GHB is in the same bracket as the already proscribed Rohypnol. One of its effects is a marked increase in libido and a lowering of inhibition. Those facts are trumpeted across the internet.
The fact that GHB is available in a clear odourless form makes it lethal for the unsuspecting victim. In the USA, and I suspect in the UK, it has been used to sedate women before they are sexually assaulted. A few drops slipped into a drink can cause unconsciousness within 20 minutes, and victims often have no memory of what has happened. It is also difficult to detect, as it metabolises quickly in the body.
A report in the January edition of Cosmopolitan magazine suggests that more than 1,000 women in the UK have reported being raped while drugged. Cosmopolitan claims that four out of five of those cases have GHB as their cause. The report highlights in disturbing interviews the horrific experiences of many victims.
The view of Detective Chief Inspector Matthews of the Wirral division of Merseyside police, an officer who has researched GHB in some depth and to whom I am indebted, adds weight to the serious concerns when he says that GHB is more dangerous and more widely available than Rohypnol. I believe that a pattern is clearly emerging from the evidence of the past few years, both here and abroad.
GHB has caused a number of deaths. There have been many near-death incidents and its use both recreational and as a date rape drug is increasing. It is slowly seeping into the consciousness of the public. Information and education to correct the misconceptions surrounding GHB must play a part. Many people who use the drug are not aware of its dangers. Ian Hignett certainly was not. Others read and believe what they see on the internet. Often, the information can be misleading or simply wrong. We must understand that the power of the medium can be marvellous when it disseminates good information, but that when it disseminates false information, it can be literally deadly. Many sites that promote GHB claim that it can improve memory, stimulate growth, reduce drug and alcohol withdrawal symptoms, reduce learning and hyperactive disability in children, relieve anxiety and even lower cholesterol. At the same time, they play down and do not mention the dangers—and dangers there are.
Concern is rising, and I know from the answers to the many questions that I have asked in the House that those concerns are shared by the Government. I understand that there has perhaps been a lack of hard evidence. Much of the evidence has been circumstantial, and that is inevitably so. I understand, too, that the Government are proceeding on the basis of science, and I am not unhappy about that, of course. However, I await with great interest the results of the three studies currently being undertaken. I understand that the Home Office review of the law on sexual offences has been completed and that conclusions are close to publication. The Metropolitan police report sponsored by the Home Office on drug-assisted rape is also complete, I understand, and the launch is scheduled for 21 June.
The recent referral, supported by the Government, of GHB to the European monitoring centre for drugs and drug addiction for a risk assessment is welcome news, and I know that its findings are expected to be concluded by mid-October. Such scientific studies are important, but there comes a time when studies need to stop and action needs to be taken, and October may be too long.
With all that in mind, I ask my hon. Friend the Minister to ensure that there is a speedy and positive response in terms of reclassification of GHB, should the results of the


studies or any other evidence suggest that such action is merited, as I am sure they will. I believe strongly that the evidence for proscribing the drug is becoming overwhelming, and that the sooner that it is banned, the better.

The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. Charles Clarke): I begin by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral, South (Mr. Chapman) on securing this debate and on the powerful and effective way in which he has made his case this evening. I am glad to have the opportunity to respond to this debate. Drug misuse is an extremely important issue and my hon. Friend's interest in it has been substantial and long-lasting. We have corresponded on the matter for some time. He set out clearly the case that related to his own constituent.
Let me begin by setting out the background. Gammahydroxybutyrate, or GHB, is a naturally occurring substance which is found in the brain of mammals. It is a white crystalline powder which dissolves in water to give a clear liquid. It is easily produced using the industrial solvent gammabutyrolactone and sodium hydroxide, or caustic soda. GBL is used in the synthesis of several other chemicals and is also used in the printing industry.
GHB was originally developed in the United States of America as a pre-surgery anaesthetic. It has also been used for the treatment of narcolepsy, alcohol dependence and opiate dependence. It is in limited use in a number of European countries, for example France and Germany, as a surgical anaesthetic, and in Italy, to treat alcohol withdrawal symptoms.
GHB first emerged as a drug of misuse in the United Kingdom in 1994. As my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral, South said, it is also known by other names, such as liquid ecstasy, and has been promoted in this country as a psychedelic substance, an aphrodisiac, an aid to weight loss and a sleep aid. It is also popular with body builders, as it is claimed that it stimulates the body's production of growth hormones.
GHB has a stimulant effect if taken in small doses. Larger doses have a sedative effect and can cause nausea, vomiting, depressed respiration and heart rate, dizziness and unconsciousness. Combining GHB with alcohol or other drugs may, as my hon. Friend said, increase the incidence of adverse effects.
The current controls on GHB are as follows. GHB is not manufactured as a licensed medicine in the United Kingdom, but the illicit manufacture, and advertisement for the sale of the substance fall within the scope of the Medicines Act 1968. It can be lawfully supplied only by a pharmacist in response to a doctor's prescription for a patient. The Medicines Control Agency investigates reports of the unlicensed manufacture, promotion and sale of GHB in the UK. In a moment, I shall say more about the agency's enforcement activities in relation to GHB.
The Government keep drug misuse patterns in this country under review. By statute, the responsibility for providing the expert advice that informs that process rests with the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. That advisory body was established by section 1 of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971. The Act requires that the council must be composed of not fewer than twenty members; there are currently 33.
The disciplines represented within the council include medical practitioners, dentists, pharmacists, veterinary practitioners, chemists and experts with knowledge on the social effects of drug abuse. The council promotes research and monitors changing trends in drug abuse, but has a statutory duty to advise the Government on many issues affecting the misuse of drugs, including public education and preventative action. Any proposal to change the classification or scheduling of a substance requires prior consultation with the council.
The advisory council has considered GHB on three occasions, most recently in 1998. The council found that GHB could cause acute health problems, particularly if taken with alcohol and drugs. However, the council concluded that GHB misuse was not widespread in the UK and did not present a sufficient social problem to warrant control under the 1971 Act. Nevertheless, as GHB could lead to acute health problems for some misusers, the council recommended that a number of other measures should be taken. It recommended that the Medicines Control Agency should be asked to increase enforcement action against illicit manufacturers and suppliers, and that more targeted health education material should be made available about the adverse effects of GHB. The council also recommended that GHB misuse should continue to be monitored.
Action has been taken on all of those fronts. The Medicines Control Agency, in conjunction with the National Criminal Intelligence Service, has formulated a control strategy and agreed an action plan regarding criminal activity associated with GHB. The strategy includes initiatives to increase awareness, optimise intelligence and tackle the supply and demand for the product.
I shall describe some of the actions that have been taken. First, a joint MCA and NCIS briefing document was issued to the Police Force Intelligence Bureau across the UK, to raise the profile and awareness of GHB.
Secondly, a similar briefing document was issued to trading standards and environmental health officers.
Thirdly, briefings have been given to the Inter-Agency Drugs Intelligence Group, Europol and police training courses.
Fourthly, a number of visits have been made to chemical companies to brief them about GHB. The companies were advised about suspicious orders and the potential diversion of GBL—which is the second drug that I mentioned.
Fifthly, the MCA has sought international co-operation and exchanged intelligence with the Dutch Healthcare Inspectorate and the United States Food and Drug Administration.
I shall also describe some of the actions that have been taken to reduce supply and demand. First, MCA officers have undertaken a proactive enforcement exercise involving a number of retail premises in Soho. Advice has been issued to retailers, and on-going compliance checks have subsequently been made. That has involved close co-operation with the Metropolitan Police clubs and vice unit.
Secondly, the MCA has established a special inquiry unit to assess the advertising and supply of medicinal products on the internet. The unit is initially targeting several internet advertisers and suppliers of GHB, and, when appropriate, will be liaising with overseas drug regulatory authorities tackling its importation.
Thirdly, in an effort to curb the advertising of GHB in various publications across the UK, the Committee of Advertising Practice, in co-operation with the MCA, released an advertising alert to its members. The alert reminded the press that it was illegal to advertise GHB.
Fourthly, since 1995, the MCA has mounted 10 successful prosecutions representing 23 charges of offences under the Medicines Act 1968.
As my hon. Friend said, drug rape has featured prominently in public debate recently. GHB is not the first drug to be associated with drug rape and there has been some irresponsible reporting in the media of what purport to be facts. Before the link with GHB, drug rape was principally associated with the drug flunitrazepam, more commonly known as Rohypnol. The publicity surrounding the possible use of Rohypnol in cases of drug rape led to it being reformulated by the manufacturer. In fact, Rohypnol has not been detected in any suspected drug rape samples submitted by the police to the forensic science service.
However, as my hon. Friend said, GHB has been identified in four samples featured in two cases in the past year. The scientific difficulty is that GHB is rapidly expelled from the body and may not be detectable beyond eight hours after ingestion, but the experience with Rohypnol warns us that it is important to be certain about the facts before seeking to react.
Rape is an extremely serious offence and it is important that the Government have a clear understanding of the extent of the drug rape problem. That is why the Home Office sponsored a Metropolitan police research initiative into drug-assisted rape, which is due to be concluded shortly. Ministers will consider the findings and recommendations of the study and the information will also be made available to the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs.
There is an international dimension. I have already mentioned GBL—the precursor to GHB—which is a widely used industrial solvent. GHB and GBL exists in equilibrium, which means that taking GBL has the same effect as taking GHB. We would want any fresh controls that we introduced on GHB to be as effective as possible. That would include considering controls on GBL. The lessons of the United States, to which my hon. Friend referred, bear that out. The federal decision to ban GHB and GBL was taken only this year. Before that, GHB—but not GBL—was banned in a number of American states. Where it was banned, there was evidence that GBL was widely misused in its place. That is why it is important to tackle the two side by side.
The control of precursor chemicals such as GBL is subject to European Union legislation. At present, the manufacture and supply of GBL is monitored throughout the EU on a voluntary basis, but the issue of whether effective controls can be introduced on GBL is clearly an important consideration for us in our on-going review of GHB.
In accordance with article 3 of the European joint action of 16 June 1997 concerning the information exchange, risk assessment and control of new synthetic

drugs, the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction—EMCDDA—was asked to prepare information on GHB for consideration by member states. Europol national units and national focal points were subsequently requested to provide information on GHB. The initial research showed little evidence that GHB was abused on a wide scale in any member state, but the United Kingdom, supported by several other member states, requested that GHB be referred to the scientific committee of the EMCDDA for a formal risk assessment. That decision was taken on 12 April this year and the results of the assessment are expected by the end of October. Member states will consider the findings and the information will also be made available to our Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs.
My hon. Friend referred to our review of sex offences, which is due to be published in the coming weeks for wide consultation on the various issues. That is another important context for the debate.
I entirely accept what my hon. Friend says about the need for speed in this matter. It cannot be delayed in the various processes. Perhaps I should not have used the word "speed". I did not realise the implications as I said it. My hon. Friend the Member for Harrow, West (Mr. Thomas), my Parliamentary Private Secretary, is more experienced in these matters. His laughter suggested that I had made a slight mis-statement that I ought to withdraw. Rapid action is very important. I assure my hon. Friend that we do not want to bog the process down in a bureaucratic morass that will take a long time to address. He rightly identified that the scientific evidence is the key. We want to be sure that we have got it right before deciding how to move forward. I know that my hon. Friend accepts that. He would not accept—and neither would I—that the need to get the scientific evidence right should be an excuse for delay in deciding how we proceed. The fact that he has brought the case to the House as he has this evening—powerfully and effectively—ensures that the momentum in addressing this is maintained.
The Government have a reasonable record in trying to address these issues, but we need to make sure that that continues. That is why I hope that what I have said tonight will reassure my hon. Friend that the Government are actively addressing his concerns about GHB in considering a range of future options, including legislative changes.
We are concerned to ensure that any decision to introduce future controls on the drug is properly based on the evidence, and that any new controls are as effective as possible. These are complex issues, and we are considering them. When the information is available, the Government will decide on how best to proceed. I hope that my hon. Friend will continue to press as he has this evening his case for expediting these matters rapidly, and I assure him that the Government take it as seriously as he does.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at ten minutes past Eleven o'clock.